


It's Only Art (if it makes you feel something)

by GrumpyBones



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: (a lot), Abuse of shakespeare while tree climbing, An exercise in how many mission snafus I can fit into one fic, Jim is so smart and also hella stupid, M/M, Misuse of Art, Mutual Pining, When knowing nothing about art, dumb boys, really dumb boys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-07-27 10:02:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20044156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GrumpyBones/pseuds/GrumpyBones
Summary: A story about finding your muse, of being someone else's, the importance of seeing what's in front of you, and doing things the hard way.A story about the world, just a little more lovely.





	It's Only Art (if it makes you feel something)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pageling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pageling/gifts).

> So I wrote this for a friend's birthday and, like all things I touch, it got wildly out of hand. But, don't worry, since this was inspired by her love of (and talent for) art... that makes this entirely her fault and thankfully not my own. Happy Birthday, Page! I'd say I'm sorry but we both know that I'm not.

Ever since moving his chess games with Spock into their personal quarters, splitting the duty of host every other occasion, the frequency of Jim’s visits to the rec rooms had become few and far between, even less often now as the very concept of ‘free time’ had added a disappearing act to its repertoire. Not that it was a bad thing, necessarily, the relocation to quarters. It gave the crew a bit more breathing room, a place to enjoy themselves without the presence of “management.” He chose to believe that he was well liked by his team but that didn’t mean that the tone never changed when he walked into a room, an unfortunate side effect built into the nature of ranks.

Plus there was the flip side to consider. It was a well known fact, at least he hoped, that Kirk captained without official downtime. Whether he was eating in the mess, having a row at the gym or, yes, even resting quietly in quarters — the crew knew that he was always available to hear out a problem, both big and small, outside of the walls of the bridge, leaving few opportunities for Kirk to let his hair down. With his off-work hours being diced into minutes he certainly wasn’t going to complain about granting those rare moments a larger serving of privacy, allowing himself to be a little more Jim and a little less Captain.

So when he enters the art studio on a random Tuesday, his supposedly off-shift day, with a toolbox in tow, he doesn’t notice the painting at first. Perhaps simply too busy fending off the weird feeling of deja-vu, as if his mind is just remembering this area of the ship still exists. The maintenance crews have entered another one of those runs where every minor thing on the ship seems intent on breaking simultaneously, their to-do list expanding by the hour. And Jim, only modestly reluctant, had suggested that he take on the jobs small enough that his jack of all trades status wouldn’t be revoked without notice should he only make any of the situations worse. In fact, when he arrives, he’s still trying not to laugh at Scotty’s mostly sincere marriage proposal, proclaimed in response to Kirk’s offer of help, and his own genuine insistence that simply not telling Bones that he was compromising the integrity of his already one-day-weekend would be a more than adequate repayment.

He’s dually distracted by his own amusement and by scanning the non-sonic sinks for the leaking faucet along the left wall to catch sight of the canvas where it sits to the right. And then, well, then he’s bent over a sink, wrench in hand, as he works on swapping out an o-ring that’s seen better days. It takes all of 15 minutes, just long enough to make him feel out of practice, when he confirms that the methodical drip has been conquered.

It isn’t until he goes to leave, onto his next project — a flickering light in a deck four hallway — when he actually, consciously, sees it. And, even then, three thoughts deep inside his own head, Jim nearly glances past. He probably still would have if it weren’t for the brilliant coloring of the upper right hand corner, which was almost impossible to ignore in the ironically bare and white-walled art room.

The viewpoint of the painting is set quite a bit back from its subject, so far so that nearly all the details of the person are lost to the simplicity of a defined silhouette. In fact, they’re so far off in the distance, you’d think them nothing more than a background addition, thrown in haphazardly, if it weren’t for the way the whole piece seems to curl towards the subject’s residing corner. The bottom edge of the canvas is dulled with realistic coloring, growing oddly blurrier the closer it gets to the vantage point, as if the artist was far sighted. The richer tones, meanwhile, sweep your eyes up and to the right, growing gradually in vibrancy the closer they swirl towards the person. There’s a delicate shift in purpose along the way, as the design seems to physically pull your gaze to the golden hues that appear unnaturally electric, haloing the man like a personal sun.

At least, Jim _thinks_ that the subject is a man, definitely humanoid, but he can only guess a gender with a heaping serving of tentativity when he’s the Captain of a ship so gloriously full of diversity. Though the majority of specifics are lost to the choice of distance, Kirk’s able to deduce from the blatant skill of the artist that the person’s wide shoulders, sweeping down into a broad back and tailoring to slender hips are definitely intentional proportions.

It’s beautiful, and intriguing, and pulling Jim apart in such an odd kind of way that he doesn’t even recognize where this snapshot is set as quickly as he ought to. He falls victim to the artist’s intentions, allowing himself to get too caught up in the ethereal framing of the small figure, moments passing, before he bothers to notice the unique double waterfall on the far left margin of the canvas. But once he does, and he _eventually_ does, he’s at least himself enough to realize that this is definitely taking place on RTD4538. They had stopped there going on three weeks ago now, the planet proving itself to be an anomaly only in the sense that it was one of their few uninhabited destinations that actually been verified as uninhabited. The science department had been allowed free reign for two days before Jim had beamed down on the third for no other reason than boredom and curiosity —even if his official records said otherwise— to almost this exact same view of the falls. Spock had met him at the arrival point, insisting it was as good a water source as any to run the algae tests he had planned on conducting that day.

Kirk had helped for awhile until it became obvious that he was mostly just in the way, Spock having offered his very best impression of a man in need of assistance for as long as he was able to. Eventually, Jim had found a good rock to sit on, watching the way the neon fish swirled at his toes, until his Science Officer had declared his task complete from the far end of the pool. Standing, Kirk had turned to take one last look at the scene behind him, the combination of the mist of the falls and the angle of the world’s warm sun was creating a rainbow overhead and Jim—well, at 33 he still wasn’t too old to be delighted by such a thing. He could feel himself smiling as Spock beckoned him with dwindling patience, “Captain?”

The too energetic spin on his heels had resulted in his boots losing their grip on the water slick rocks, only realizing he had done a fantastic job of overcorrecting his balance when it was far too late. With a yelp even Kirk found funny, he fell backwards into the same water that he had just spent the better part of an hour being enchanted by. Spock had tried to be kind as he dredged him up out of the shallows, Jim hardly able to blame him for the smile that was currently living in the deepest brown of Spock’s eyes as he helped a soggy Captain Kirk climb onto his back, minding the ankle that he had managed to twist.

The heat of his First Officer’s body could be felt through his slowly soaking blue shirt and Jim’s sopping gold one as Kirk wrapped his legs around the Vulcan’s waist, the action sharp in contrast to his verbal protesting, “I can just beam back up, Spock. Chapel could right this in a minute and they can transport me into the camp instead of you having to carry me all the way there.”

The arms curving around his knees, keeping him up, had tightened, Spock’s face turning slightly so his ear brushed over Kirk’s chin, as if Jim wouldn’t be able to hear him in the vast quiet of the woods.

“The site is only a short walk away and Doctor McCoy has brought a regenerator with him. It will be likely no faster should you go through the process of returning to the ship.” The pitch of his voice dipping as he added, “Additionally, you have only just arrived.”

Jim forced himself to eat the _I’ve missed you too,_ since he hadn’t been sure he’d be able to play it off as a tease, saying instead, “You’re eventually going to have to admit that you just enjoy watching Bones yell at me.”

A few steps went by in silence, easing their individual breaths into a joint rhythm, set by the steady beat of Spock’s pace. Jim’s knees pressed in that much tighter, knowing, somehow, that the Vulcan would interpret the physical reassurance for what it was: permission to say whatever sarcastic comment the Vulcan was clearly eager to express.

It was worth it, entirely, to be the willing butt of a joke simply to hear the pleased contour of Spock’s tone as he quipped, “No more than you seem to enjoy causing him to, Captain.”

Jim had been too busy to protest, his wrists pressing into his ride’s sharp collarbones, holding on tightly as his laugh threatened to slip him off of Spock’s back. Kirk could feel, almost, the Vulcan’s smile from where his temple occasionally connected with the side of Jim’s jaw, the ear below him growing green with the same flare of warmth Spock’s body gave off each time an emotion reared its undeniable head. Decidedly, Kirk had chosen not to mention the blushing, finding no reason to spoil Spock’s half of the moment with unnecessary embarrassment and understanding, anyway, that the Vulcan would blame his overheating on physical exertion with a jab about _additional weight _that the Captain was just fine without.

It had been a short walk back, quicker than at least Jim would have preferred, and Spock had made fast work of delivering him to the mercy of Bones. He was slow, however, to leave the medical tent, the Vulcan looking over the enraged Doctor’s shoulder towards his Captain with an expression that would have been a wink on anyone else.

RTD4538 had been another match on the pyre, a poke at the same burnt spot inside of him that this painting is irritating. A spot that had ignited as nothing more than a spark, an interest, really, over two years ago on a normal day, in the middle of what would have been July on Earth, halfway through an average alpha shift. They were passing a gas giant, the kind that made Jupiter look like an adorable golf ball, the kind you never get used to. And Jim, already smitten and too blind to realize it, had looked away from the gorgeous display on the view screen to the only thing he was absolutely sure would compare in beauty: Spock’s reaction to it. It was a quiet moment, the last strings of doubt unweaving to reveal what every layer of his subconsciousness had already known since nearly the birth of their friendship, explaining much more than the realization asked of him. One James Kirk of Terra was hopelessly in love with S’chn T’gai Spock of Vulcan and there was, frankly, nothing to be done about it.

So he hadn’t tried to do anything about it, not at the time, and he doesn’t now, and they all seem to carry on just fine. Through chess games that only prove Spock’s brilliance, sparring matches that showcase his strength, and quiet talks set well past the human’s curfew which provided a banquet for the rest of his adoration to feast on: a kindness, a wit, and a deadly sense of humor that had Jim chuckling through the pain of newfound heartache. With each conversation, each mission, each pass of a side eye, the Captain fell a little more in love and Spock, well, his smiles had begun to come with more ease and _that,_ Jim reckoned, was more than a fair trade.

When he’s pulled out of his musings and back into the art room by an ensign, one who was most definitely not there the last time he had two coherent neurons, he has no idea how long he’s been blatantly staring at the work of art.

“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” Marshalls, he believes, asks.

“It is,” letting the awe hang from his voice, displayed like Christmas ornaments. “Any idea who painted it?”

She shakes her head in his peripheral, Jim’s eyes locking back onto the canvas in what may barely shy of blatant rudeness. “No, they must come late in gamma, they’re never here when I am,” her voice full of the same frustration that his stomach is currently brewing. “I’d love to watch them work, get a few tips if they were willing, oils have always been a weak point for me. It’s the layering, I think. I can never really figure out the first one, it’s hard to plan that far ahead.”

Jim nods, like he has any clue what she’s talking about. “They’d have to be down here for hours at a time, wouldn’t they? You’re bound to run into them eventually.”

Marshalls shrugs and Kirk at least offers her a couple of degrees more of his vision. “Depends. Maybe at the start of a new one. Though it’s really the drying time that gets you with this medium, they could only come down for a minute or two, touch up there and here, then days to set,” Jim continues to nod as she adds, “Though they seem to blow through them.”

“Them?”

“Oh yeah, they must be using modified paints,” she offers, missing his point. “They only take a few weeks tops before they’re completed. It’s ludicrous.” She continues with an undercurrent of grumble, “Any time I try mixing on the canvas like that I just get brown. How do you even get brown from mixing different blues?”

Later, Jim may feel bad for ignoring her, but he’s too curious now for guilt, pushing past her irritations with an eager, “How many have there been?"

Another shrug, “At least half a dozen.” Kirk can hear the beginnings of suspicion boiling in her tone, disturbing the initial emotion of mutual appreciation. “I didn’t know you painted, Captain?”

He forces his face into a comedic grin as he responds, “Oh I don’t, and you definitely don’t want me to,” stalling his way to an actual, if not entirely honest, answer of, “It just reminds me of someone. I figured it could be a nice present if the person sold them, maybe, if not an entirely practical one.” The smile starts slipping before he can push it back on, voice too cheery as he ends with, “So you’ll have to update me if you ever track down the artist.”

When Jim finally excuses himself, leaving for deck four, it takes far too much effort to not look back.

* * *

To say that he’s stopped thinking about the painting would be a pretty terrible lie, one that even Kirk’s best poker face couldn’t support. At best, it has been upgraded to the current crown of the things he’s usually thinking about _not_ thinking about, with hope for its discontinuance not exactly appearing on the horizon. In and of itself, harboring on a thought isn’t unusual for the Captain. Jim’s plenty familiar with having his witching hours plagued by inescapable scenes of his childhood, by words left unsaid, and by the mountain of ‘what if’s this kind of life leaves in its wake. And, to be fair, he’s a fixator by nature; noticing the smaller details and being able to recount them is part of what makes him so good at his job, after all. It’s a life saving tool with the not wholly unwelcome side effect that the beauty of a flower or the particular shade of a sunrise can be left to rattle around in his brain for days. However, on their own accord, they do eventually find their exit.

The problem here lies with the fact that the art piece has found the most unassailable way of digging in and making a permanent home in Jim Kirk’s subconscious: It has latched onto Spock.

Awareness of it had dawned with the basic acknowledgement that each time Jim’s mind would wander to the crisp forest scene in the art room he would, unwittingly, bodily turn himself towards his Vulcan. On the bridge, Kirk would spin his chair towards the science station whenever his mind would fill with the sound of those waterfalls, despite not having any intention of interrupting his First Officer as he dared to actually work. Sitting in the mess hall, Jim constantly found himself leaning into Spock’s shoulder as the First Officer and CMO’s bickering fought to spoil the peacefulness of his daydreams, yanking his subconscious away from the calm of swirling fish and tepid currents. In the turbo lift, Kirk had nearly knocked himself over after blinking himself back from RTD4538 just to realize he was blatantly staring at his First Officer, his chest pressing against the full line of Spock’s arm despite the ample space, as the Vulcan recited, seemingly word-for-word, the briefing they’d only received yesterday about their upcoming mission. There also was, of course, the way he’d twist himself up in bed, his neck allowing his face to curl towards the shared bathroom which could, if he wanted, lead him into Spock’s quarters.

Acknowledging could only lead to the questioning, which could only draw one answer: The painting managed to express what Jim himself could barely understand, capturing with eerie accuracy the profound shift in his worldview whenever one particular half-Vulcan was present. Still, the galaxy being slightly more divine when Spock was around wasn’t the root issue. The way that the sun burned brighter the closer Spock was to him, the force at which the stars intensified in the blackness whenever they shared an observation deck couch, the ease of the universe saturating itself in beauty in his presence. All that had been established as fact long ago, unworthy by now to be last page news.

The panic ignites from the second step of his revelation: If this so wholly encapsulates the exact mental breakdown he endures each time Spock has the audacity to be near him — what if he isn’t the only one so affected? That anyone else could so thoroughly feel the same about his Vulcan, complete with the proficiency to express it in such an alluringly delicate way when Jim himself can barely to dare to think about it... the thought unleashes something feral inside of him, something that feels inherently too much like jealousy.

It takes the better half of a day to stuff the feeling back into the closet from whence it came, the main tool in his arsenal being the power of reason. Spock is a fully functioning adult, at least most days, and is more than capable of handling himself against any secret, or less so, admirers. Jim is the very last person in the alpha quadrant who can pass judgement on anyone falling prey to the besotment of Spock, hating an anonymous being for doing what he does with the ease of breathing would be a little too hypocritical, even for a human like himself.

When he’s thinking reasonably, and he’s honestly trying to, he knows that the likelihood of Spock being the subject is slim at best. There was a sizable away team for that particular mission and that’s only assuming the painted person had actually been there, not simply sketched in by the artist who had longed for their company in such a beautiful place. It could be that the simplest explanation for the precise depiction of his emotional turmoil is that being enamored with Spock is not the only means to bending reality, perhaps this is just what the view from love looks like.

Besides, the childish part of himself offers, anyone who was properly in love with the Vulcan would have gotten his proportions right in a way the piece certainly didn’t.

Kirk is well aware that he needs to stop dwelling on the painting and artist alike. Art was created to leave an impression and he has simply been particularly vulnerable to this one’s attempts. It was a transaction; he’s given the piece an unholy amount time and consideration and in return received a little soul shaking in the way that good art tends to. The flaw in the deal had only been in his response: Overanalyzing his receipts, twisting them up into knots when he ought to be sleeping, showing them off to any brain cell that would look. Recognizing that too far is far enough, he makes the decision to silence the masochist inside of himself that insists he talk to Spock about the painting, pointedly starts avoiding that area of deck eight like it may contain the plague, and changes his mental channel anytime thoughts swerved too widely in that direction.

If he dreams of crashing water, of measured footsteps, and careful brushstrokes, well, there’s no one that needs to know about it.

So though he isn’t about to admit it, Jim has been fairly grateful for the continued absurdity of his schedule which had become to feel more like a brakeless train on downward incline. His daily calendar had been packed to a tiring degree with briefings precursing mishaps, followed by _de_briefings which were, in turn, the opening act for towers of paperwork. Whatever moments of reprise he did manage to scrounge together had been a fair amount too precious to dedicate to the act of stalking an art room for reasons he can barely lend a name to, let alone justify. Instead, they’ve been dedicated to the, not any more productive, ramblings of Bones and the pages of his current book, and the pouting disappointment that his chess record against Spock inspires.

A record that may be swinging back towards his favor, however minuscule the fashion, if Spock’s equally small facial reaction to Jim’s last move on the chessboard is any indicator.

“You know, I’ve seen you sketch a lot for the sake of missions, poisonous planets to look out for, persons of interests for the security teams, and they’ve always been impressive,” Kirk says, suddenly, leaning on one of his more desperate tactics: distraction. The trick of it, he cautions silently, is to not get so involved in the diversion that Jim, himself, falls prey to it. He waves off the voice in the back of his head, the one that sounds remarkably like a warning, as he continues to speak out without thought, “Do you ever actually draw just for the sake of it?”

And maybe, later, he’ll have to admit to himself that intentionally not thinking about something takes more effort than simply being honest with oneself.

“I have, in the past,” Spock replies carefully.

“Is there a reason that you never told me this?” Jim’s voice gets bogged down in knee-deep amusement, missing the feigned annoyance he was aiming for. Spock’s responding look could mean any number of things, first and foremost of which is that he has no intention of answering the question, his standard, _Because you have not asked_, living in the line of his unimpressed eyebrow. “What sorts of things does a Vulcan draw? Or should I say paint?”

“I have both drawn, and painted, many things.”

Jim allows himself to stare at Spock, Spock who seems perfectly content just reflecting Kirk’s own petitioning gaze. The Vulcan’s mouth is smug despite his impending doom on the board, his pupils melting into the deep chocolate of his irises in the dimmer lighting he prefers, the very tips of Spock’s ears the saturated green they always get in his warmer quarters. Jim manages, finally, after much too long of a pause, to look away. Though the accomplishment of managing it at all feels depressingly like a victory.

Humor has always been Jim’s easiest line of defense to summon and he does so quickly with a, “You could have been a 21st century Earth politician — do you ever actually just answer a question?”

A smile lives in the rightmost corner of Spock’s mouth, curling up despite the obvious, and confusing, spark of disappointment in his eyes. “On occasion.”

It only takes Jim three more moves to dance his opponent into a checkmate, rewarding him with only a muted sense of triumph.

* * *

The maintenance agenda had been getting shorter everyday, like clockwork. So methodically so that Kirk almost doesn’t blame Spock for having the gall to answer, “No, though perhaps there are no issues in need of addressing,” when Jim, wondering if his own comm is just having connection issues, asks if the First Officer has received a report from engineering around ship’s noon, three hours late for the normally punctual Scotty.

Kirk’s, “You better hope there’s something wooden at that science station to knock on —” is cut off by the sounding of duel notifications, the unique noise assigned to the engineering department echoing on the bridge, announcing the incoming itemization of twenty-seven items that have been added to yesterday’s much more tolerable five.

Though it’s practically worth it to watch the way his sharp eyebrows raise, the Vulcan’s mouth turning down into a frown as he slowly turns back to his desk without meeting Jim’s eyes, Spock’s face wearing guilt in a particularly appealing way today. Jim’s reply to the message, an offer to lend a hand after bridge shift, is answered so quickly that the Captain’s half convinced Mr. Scott had pre-typed the response. The list of four tasks is written out with sporadic clumps of begging from the engineer, creating a pathetic enough scene to silence the cramp in his neck and the bags under his eyes that Kirk can literally feel on his face as commits to getting them done.

“Captain.”

Jim’s already smiling, just at the way Spock waits until he turns around to continue, “I have failed to find anything at my station made of suitable materials per your request.”

A chuckle erupts out of him as he waves his still-illuminated comm screen in the direction of the science station, trying to simmer the grin on his face into something a little more reprimanding. “I think we’ll survive, Mr. Spock. You’d be late, anyways.”

“Despite the illogical nature of human superstitions, and my personal insistence that striking wood as a means of dictating a favorable outcome is an inherently flawed system, I will endeavor to procure a sufficient object should you find occasion to call for the practice again,” Spock offers while inefficiently burying the quizzical expression that finds his eyes.

Definitely worth it.

* * *

He’s nearly completed his fourth, and final, task when Jim’s forced to make a decision. He can either: one, admit that he chose do these in a particular order with the sole purpose being that he would end up in this exact hallway during this exact shift rotation; or he can, two, actually wrap up and go to bed like he definitely ought to.

When he enters the art studio, it’s so late into gamma that tomorrow him is already grumbling. Kirk abandons the charade fully, the pretense of finding himself here by coincidence crumbling, as his eyes immediately look to the corner he’s hoping to find the artist in.

The artist is, of course, not there and neither is the depiction of RTD4538 that he can now admit he was eager to see again, the past couple hours immersed in anticipation. Though disappointment is short lived, if it finds the time to be birthed at all, as Jim takes in what has adopted the spot on the same easel.

This time, he immediately recognizes the setting, Ty’Ryen, the location of their last first contact mission.

Day one had gone shockingly well, the initial conversation of _Hey, so, aliens are real_ always an interesting one to have, and never an easy one to plan. The inhabitants had been hesitant, for obvious reasons, though remarkably accepting — all to the passive delight of his First Officer who had been properly gushing for hours at how the Ty’Ryens had managed to achieve warp without so much as inventing a gun. Nearly everything the Fleet knew about their history pointed to a peaceful timeline, local disputes being solved over negotiation tables, countries banding together until the small inhabitable portion of the world had been completely united. Spock had managed to make ‘logical’ sound like a love sonnet by the time they’d arrived and Jim, well, he was just hoping this whole thing didn’t simply sound too good to be true.

Day two had gone, if possible, even better. They had all, mostly, spent the morning and earlier half of the afternoon together, splitting at the edge of an animal enclosure which was used for farming. The science department was breaking off at the chance to study the livestock up close, an introduction to the planet’s non-humanoid lifeforms and a glimpse at the dietary needs of their hosts an exciting one, though it was early to be making more than wide-net assumptions.

In a quiet moment between the two, Spock had asked if Kirk would mind him staying behind, his exact wording being more along the lines of, “Would you permit me to leave you with a few security members, in order to oversee the documentation here? ”

It had somehow sounded even more caring in the cold translation of the Vulcan’s carefully sculpted vocabulary.

And Jim had immediately shook off the concern, a quip about being old enough to mind himself forming when a tree over Spock’s shoulder had caught his eye, causing a smile to take the place of words on his lips. They were few and far between on the mostly desert planet, and this one had been particularly robust, standing out on the sparsely interrupted horizon.

“Captain?”

“Sorry,” he said with eyes sliding back to Spock’s as he lazily gestured behind the Vulcan. “That tree, just hadn’t expected to find anything worth climbing down here,” pausing to dip his head, wielding his best tempting smile as he watched Spock’s immovable face through the fan of his eyelashes. “If you’re interested?”

The Vulcan had looked amused, his mouth sitting unevenly on his face, even if all he offered was a brisk, “You will comm me if you find yourself in need, Captain,” that sounded more like a reprimand and less like the offer it probably should have been, turning to leave without waiting for dismissal as Kirk bit his lip to keep in a laugh.

He had spent the evening walking the edges of the city with the Empress who was full of the traditional questions, and Jim, hopefully, with some of the answers as the dual small suns set just an hour out of sync with each other. Kirk had been struck by the sight of an enormous garden of edible plant-life that she was leading them to, an impressive irrigation system leading back to the walls of the city, built, the Empress explained, for the purpose of minimizing damage on their housing from the crushing desert winds. The greenhouse had been possibly more beautiful than the fauna inside of it, the large glass panes elaborate in their forms, looking more like an Earth cathedral than a simple home for plants. The framework holding it together had been something like copper with an iridescent shine, the whole structure seeming to glow in with the burning crimson sky it reflected.

Jim had wished, in that sore spot inside of him, that Spock had been there to witness it. He told himself that the Vulcan would likely have plenty of time to see it before they were anywhere near ready to leave, knowing, rationally, that the universe wouldn’t always allow them to share the awe of firsts.

By the third day, he and Spock had become comfortable enough to enter the city limits without a security team so, of course, luck had chosen that particular day to turn on them. A translator malfunction had taken Kirk’s, “Your societal family structure has such an attractive design,” and warped it into a less than flattering, or perhaps _too _flattering, statement about the general use of the word “mother” — a term the population used interchangeably with their translation of “Empress.” Though the away team wasn’t actually sure what the box had spit out, it was obvious from the wall of irate faces that something had become rapidly unaligned.

Spock had tried again with a simpler, “The concept of family extending beyond blood relations is an appealing one.” This had somehow, they later learned, been reshaped into an offer that Jim would rather not repeat, lewd enough that the already furious faces of the Ty’Ryens has grown into a righteous rage.

They had made it past the housing before Spock, with a sigh loud enough that Jim heard it over both the sounds of an angry mob and the human’s own heavy breathing, veered towards Jim’s tree with Vulcan speed. Kirk had followed after him, equal parts mirth and raw panic. The Vulcan had dropped to one knee upon reaching the trunk, sliding into place with inhuman grace, establishing eye contact with Jim who had fallen a few paces behind. And Kirk, with the passing of a glance, understood what should have taken an entire conversation. Without hesitation, he had utilized the boost, his foot pushed off Spock’s thigh with as much gentleness as the circumstances could tolerate, allowing himself a pained expression on behalf of the green bruise that would definitely be there by morning. Kirk had reached back down, fingers wide, as Spock had taken the offered hand and allowed himself to be tugged upwards, ascending after the Captain to a safer height.

With Jim’s comm having been lost in the jostle of sprinting, Spock had been the one to call in a request to be transported, glaring over the device as if he planned on holding Kirk personally accountable for their current setting.

Jim had allowed himself to giggle, even as the pointed end of a spear poked at the bottom of his boot, taking in the Vulcan’s indulgent aura of annoyance as Kirk boasted, “Well, the means were a surprise, but I suppose I did get what I wanted.”

“I do wish, on occasion, that my desires towards an outcome overruled your personal inclinations,” Spock’s voice nearly a grumble as he fought to pull his longer legs out of the reach of the riot.

“Oh?” Blonde eyebrow raising as he fought to look less satisfied. “And what desires ail you, Spock?”

The Vulcan’s eyebrow mirrored his, the line of his mouth firmly exasperated as he quoted without inflection, “_‘I do desire we may be better strangers.’_”

“Blasphemy! _‘A friend should bear his friend’s infirmities!’_”

Spock’s head twisted away to hide a smile, quick enough that even Jim had nearly missed it, though slow enough that the slip had almost definitely been intentional, and also small enough to still plead innocent should Kirk have been naive enough to call him out on the old trick.

When he did look back, face gratified, Spock paused before speaking blithely, “To what degree, Captain, should I chase after your delusions? _‘Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly.’_”

“To every degree!” Jim barked back, laughing as he moved to stand on the branch, pulling his dangling feet away from the madness below them which had yet to grow bored. He leaned across the space between them, now towering over his Vulcan, as he asked in animated earnest, “Would I not do the same?”

And Jim had been dumb enough to bend in further, leaving less than a foot between their noses as he watched the feigned apathy on Spock’s face pull into the clear slot of amazement when Kirk continued too honestly, “_‘I would not wish any companion in the world but you.’_”

The Vulcan’s mouth had fallen open as Jim’s snapped shut, the human lacking the means to rope the moment back into the mode of banter. Though the Enterprise’s typical mistiming proved true to form, the telltale crackling feeling on his skin initiating as he closed his eyes through the transport. Spock’s gaze was still, somehow, locked onto him upon reappearance despite the vast change in angle, as if the Vulcan had sensed where he would be. Kirk had reached out, perhaps before he was even whole again, Spock already leaning towards him, only to be ripped apart by the normal chaos of the medical team.

It had taken the length of a full check up, three medical scans, two video comms from admiralty, and a total of four reports before Jim had found the opportunity to check his personal communicator. Finding, when he finally did, five simple words from Spock which, even lacking context, punched solidly against the sore, burned spot inside of Kirk’s chest.

“I would not either, Jim.”

On the canvas before him, the orange tinted bark of the same tree they’d been captive in, jagged like Earth’s tipus, twist into the unique knots just to the right of the viewpoint, only a few of the yellow spotted leaves hanging down into the frame with minimal detail. As if the viewer is standing below it, the close positioning cuts out before the branches, making it impossible to tell if any Starfleet Officers are currently residing in them, though the lack of a mob at the base suggests that the answer is no. The true subject of the painting, as in the last one, sits quite further away.

The person is only slightly closer than they had been in the previous painting, set back against the city’s wall near the unique greenhouse that had left him enamored, too far away for any detail that could spring recognition. The three quarter profile, however, at least gives Kirk more confidence that he is, in fact, male. He looks different than the last portrait in a way that Jim struggles to put into words, yet managing to remain remarkably the same, as if the variation lies in the planet’s reaction to him. Ty’Ryen had been especially one-toned. The beige of the sand, the tan of the border fence, the khaki and umbers of the elaborate stone and stick dwellings. It had been, in a word, _brown,_ and though it offered plenty of beauty in it’s own way, the painting celebrates the insipid palette no less than it had RTD4538’s vibrancy. And the man, he looks no less at home surrounded by it.

Where his halo had been mostly gold tones previously, there now are strands of amber and flecks of green, encircling his chest and cascading behind him, like the old fashion bridal garments of Earth. Jim wonders if the effect had just been easier to miss in the brilliancy of the forest, biting his lip against the unfulfillable desire to compare them.

He has company in this one, though the starburst consuming the man swallows all distinguishing features, dissipating enough by their knees to distinguish the newcomer’s lack of uniform compared to the man’s Fleet regulation pants.

Jim stares at the shine on the yellow hues that surround the man, as if he’s only missed the artist’s latest session by hours or, worse, minutes. He wonders what could lie under the brilliant haze, if he could only get a shirt color then perhaps he could find an appropriate reason to access the mission files, narrow it down —

“You better not be about to smudge that paint.”

The expression on Marshalls’ face matches her tone perfectly, her and Jim sharing a grimace when the force of his turning brings his outreaching hand dangerously close to the source of her threat. He has absolutely no idea how long she’s been standing there, not that he can claim any differently for himself, refusing to look at the clock he knows is set on the wall behind him until he can do so subtly, eager to hold onto any of the pride he has left.

“I wasn’t,” he says, his voice sounding like a child’s whose hand is still in a cookie jar. “I wouldn’t have.”

“I thought you weren’t an artist, Captain?” And he ought to do something, really, about the level of casualness the general ship population is willing to wield towards him.

“And I thought you didn’t come down here during gamma?” he quips back instead.

“I saw that they had started a new one a few days ago,” with a shrug. “I figured it was worth a shot, trying to catch them. Got to be honest, I’m starting to think that I may just have to run into them the conventional way.” She watches Kirk carefully as he raises his eyebrow in question. “Actually just reaching out to them,” making both of their noses crinkling, immaturely, at the thought. “It’d be a lot less weird for _you _to leave them a note, if you really just wanted to commission a piece.”

Kirk shakes his head. “I’m still not sure. It seems a little over the top for a gift, don’t you think?”

“That would mostly just depends on who it’s for. This isn’t exactly the kind of thing you’d get for someone you aren’t really close to, you have to be positive about what they’d want to be looking at all of the time,” attempting to prod her way towards the center of his concerns, subtly even more absent in this conversation than it had been in their first.

“We’re close enough,” he replies, unsurprised by his own confidence. He’d have more problem narrowing down what to choose for Spock than picking a place that shared meaning for them both.

“It’s a big wall commitment.” Her eyes watch his the way one watches a card trick, waiting for the slip. “Even if you’d be sending it to someone not on the ship?” leaving the layers of her question left unhidden.

Jim does his best to keep his expression separate from the faint alarm sirening off inside of himself, offering as little as, “I’m just not sure if it’s a bit overzealous.” Tacking on tellingly, though perhaps only to him, “too sentimental.”

“Or,” her voice perking up, most likely at his expense, “you could embrace it?”

“And how would you suggest that I go about doing that?” he asks, his regret flushing out as Marshalls’ smiles widens.

“Paint something yourself,” she says as if it’s the obvious solution to his problem.

The scoff is out of Jim before he realizes it’s being formed in his throat. “You wouldn’t be advocating such a thing if you’d ever seen what creativity looks like by my hands.”

“I don’t know. Say this person, whoever they are,” she pauses, continuing only when he refuses to bite with his own deadsetly neutral expression. “Say they were just as horrible as you think you are and they painted you something,” she continues quickly, the look in her eyes growing sharper as she lands her point, “wouldn’t you still appreciate it?”

He doesn’t even need to imagine it, the vague idea of receiving something like that from Spock carving out a brand new hole inside of him, right next to the rest of them. ‘Appreciate’ wouldn’t exactly be the word. Whether he’d survive would be another question entirely.

Jim had nearly been in tears over a book of Vulcan poetry he’d been given for his birthday, Spock’s neat handwriting translating in the margins. Spock had used a logical black ink on all but the ones he thought Jim would like most, switching to a green pen to signify his recommendations. Green, of course, being the color that Kirk had kiddingly claimed to be his favorite early on in their mission, a tease that had gone over the Vulcan’s head due to, he knows now, their unfamiliarity at the time. Jim had let the joke flop, finding it too unkind to highlight the misunderstanding, accepting his newfound preferred color as a self-amended personality point. Though, thinking now of cheeks flushed olive after sparring matches, of warm ear tips, and patches of bruised skin that speak of survival, it’s funny, in it’s own way, how a false fact, earned through an unwillingness to embarrass his First Officer, had grown into a real one because of him.

So a gift like this from Spock? No, he doesn’t think he could weather it.

“God,” he says, in a more honest tone than he’d prefer. “Of course I would.”

“Well, they’re your… friend, too, right?” She waits until Jim reluctantly nods his head. “Okay then, let’s get started.”

She walks over to the wall of cabinets, opposite of the door, pulling a few things from the organized shelves, before ushering Kirk to one of the tables and sliding a sketch pad towards his chair. Jim sits, timidly taking the offered pencil in hand.

“Have any idea where you want to start?” Marshalls asks, a valid question.

“A person, maybe?” He offers, trying to summon at least a mirage of assurance, doubt bleeding through quite spectacularly.

She looks intimidated in her own right for a second, doing a full facial rendition of shrug before flipping the book open with a, “Of course you’re not going to make this easy,” expression morphing into something that is obviously aimed at confidence. “We’ll start with the basics.”

Marshalls draws a circle with such precision that Jim is already lost, before etching a cross through it, and then elongating the bottom into an upside down egg. She sketches in, softer, the shapes of eyes and a nose, adding more harsh reference lines as she goes, mapping out the proportions with the actual face drawn in almost a recessed fashion. She tears out the guide, sliding it towards him wearing a smile that’s half apology and half a challenge.

“You made that look maliciously easy,” he says, staring at it the way one would a death threat.

“Practice,” is her only response.

“And that’s it?” he asks, unsure. “That’s really all it takes?”

Her whole face scrunches, slightly, “Well, not exactly. This is obviously a human tutorial — I shouldn’t have assumed.” And though she is, technically, wrong, Kirk doesn’t correct her, waving her off. “And besides, everyone’s face is unique in its own way, compared to the next one. It’s like drawing a bike, or something. The basics are always going to be the same, but every model is going to be a little bit off from standard. Capturing those differences is what’s going to get you your person.” The double meaning shines in the twist of her smirk as she moves to stand, having dedicated enough of her free time to Jim’s futility.

Kirk looks up at her, eyebrow raised, as she stares smugly down at him.

“I don’t think it’s that simple, ensign.”

A pretty painting is not, Jim knows, enough to win a man over.

“You haven’t even tried yet, Captain,” is her all too perspective response.

* * *

Keeping away from the art studio is growing to be unbelievably harder than it should be, which is as sure a sign as any that keeping out of it is the best course of action, at least as far as sanity is concerned. It isn’t like he doesn't have plenty of other things to be doing, he can’t even recall the last time that had been the case. The stack of books Spock’s loaned him alone could take up an entire shore leave, having grown to an alarming height on his bedside table while he wastes his free time absentmindedly speculating about something that doesn’t inherently concern him, as much as his inner self protests the thought.

So it’s with only a bit of moping that he exercises the last of his self-restraint, bunkering down in his quarters when he’s not chasing broken PA-speakers and loose wall panels. Which is why he’s in his room, reading, when Spock knocks on his door, asking if he could be amenable to an impromptu game of chess. Jim understands that he’s been a little distracted lately, his mind slipping elsewhere during the more tedious moments in alpha, and he knows this is Spock’s way of checking up on him without actually going through the process of admitting that he’s worried. It delights even the more tired areas of Kirk’s psyche, his heart beating just a tad bit faster at the thought of making a home on Spock's list of personal concerns even with all the proof of concept he’s previously received through the years.

He accepts the offer, always too eagerly, stepping back inside to make a cup of tea for his sudden guest without so much as asking if he wants it. When he turns around, Spock is holding the paper art pad Jim had commandeered after Marshalls’ short lesson, having left it sitting next to his open book on the desk.

“I do not remember being made aware that you practice any of the arts, Captain.” There’s an undertone there, one Kirk himself has perfected. The sound of hurt making its way into a simple inquiry, refusing to ask the more honest question of why this information is only finding its way to him now.

“I don’t," Jim corrects quickly, not wanting Spock to dwell on the particular concern of being left out. “Or, well, I’m not sure that anything I’ve managed counts.”

Spock doesn’t acknowledge Kirk’s dig at himself, though his face has shifted away from the sting of confusion as the Vulcan takes in Jim’s newest masterpiece. It had started with the intention of a sunset, only the execution looks more like a box of wax crayons after being left in a car on a too hot day, and Kirk isn’t too proud of a man to admit that he’s seen better renderings in the academy’s daycare center.

“Even in art you are not afraid to make bold choices,” Spock finally offers, so kindly it encourages Jim, if only for the sake of proving him wrong.

He plucks the notebook out of Spock’s hand with a smirk. “Just be grateful you weren’t here for my attempts at people, talk about _bold,_” he says, despite the fact that he’s already started flipping through the desecrated pages to find the offensive portrait, holding the sketch pad up in front of Spock, the way an exorcist wields a bible.

Spock’s immediate response is a fitting one, his expression not wholly unlike what Kirk imagines a demon may look like at seeing the word of God, eyes widening with what could quickly develop into panic. And Jim ought to be embarrassed, really, and perhaps he would be if only the entire scene weren’t so pleasantly comical. Honestly, he isn’t sure what's funnier: the sketch itself or Spock’s overwhelmed reaction to it. The unfortunate likeness of Leonard McCoy lives in nothing more than a plump stick figure, his excessively crossed eyebrows barely leaving room for his downturned mouth which manages to extend off of his face.

He’d been trying and failing to draw Spock, sans the ears as if he hadn’t given himself away already, when Marshalls had suggested he try more a exaggerated expression than the subtle mirth he knew to be Spock’s standard. Jim trusted her reasoning that doing so would teach him about the intricacies of facial muscles and aid his overall structure, though he was fairly sure the peak of his problems lay elsewhere in a land known as skill—namely his lack of it. He, however, had absolutely no better ideas and since _exaggerated_ easily pointed towards one certain crewmember, his new subject had basically chosen itself.

It’s terrible, truly, and terrifying on several different levels. Kirk has a hard enough time not laughing just being in the room with the thing but watching his stoic Vulcan try to process it — Jim finally gives in.

Spock finally finds his reply in the heap of horror clearly brewing inside of him. “Your proportion markings, while not entirely inaccurate, are made far too dark. Perhaps they distracted you.”

“Ah, yes. Definitely has nothing to do with a distinct lack of talent,” Kirk teases back. “One of your science ensigns was trying to teach me, Marshalls? Though I’m not trying to reassign blame, I was well past the point of desperation by the time we arrived here.”

“It is not entirely without potential.”

“Do you dare attempt to take me on as a student?” It’s a joke, honestly, as he pulls his mouth into one of his more alluring smiles, head tilting down to peer at Spock through his eyelashes, aiming for lewd, though the chuckle he’s still fighting may spoil it.

Spock ignores him per usual, forgoing a response in lieu of taking the sketchpad from Jim’s hands only after the captain had spent several seconds batting it against the Vulcan’s chest. He flips the sheets over to a blank one as he makes his way to their chess table, saying as he takes his seat, “I do not think that watching my methods will help you.”

Kirk takes his usual chair opposite of him, snorting in response to what may have been an insult.

Though it’s quickly proven to be less of a derogatory remark and more of a fact as Spock immediately begins a detailed outline of a face completely sans planning. Though his outline is done sparingly, when he starts on the first feature — the nose oddly enough — his lines are bold and sure. Jim’s not sure what it says about him that it takes the addition of both the eyes and then a mouth, pieced together with Spock’s occasional glance upwards at him, in order for Kirk to recognize his own likeness. At best it could translate to something positive about his own state of vanity.

The structure of his cheekbones are being mapped out with annoying speed when Jim finally interrupts him. “You do realize that you’re just showing off, don’t you? Not very Vulcan of you, Mr. Spock.”

“I recall warning you that I did not believe you would benefit from this exercise.”

“How foolish of me to doubt you,” he teases, leaning over the table to get a better look. “I suppose my artistic experiments will just have to remain in the realm of ugly.”

“Many consider art to be entirely subjective. The beauty of the piece does not immediately correlate to the work’s worth or its ability to influence. There are many technically flawless pieces that offer very little value to the viewer while the opposite is just as often the case.” Spock finishes his cheekbones, moving up to Jim’s hairline. “For instance, in a negotiation meeting, would you rather make a statement that moved people into action or one that was grammatically sound?”

“I don’t think my Bones offers much in the way of either.”

A pointed eyebrow lifts in the equivalent of a shrug. “While I would not expect your portrayal of the Doctor to be hung in a gallery anytime in the near future, you succeeded in making both your subject, and his distress, recognizable. Those should both be considered accomplishments,” Spock notes. Jim’s gaze has sidelined watching the frustrating ease with which the Vulcan’s hand draws, moving instead to the alluring focus of Spock’s expression. Meaning, he knows exactly how long it’s been since the Vulcan has bothered to reference him, _awhile_, being, if anything, an understatement. “While my portraits, currently, surpass yours in realism, you succeeded where I often do not: Capturing emotion.”

Jim tilts his head, working his spine to a profound angle, trying to get a better perspective of Spock’s nearly done project. “I don’t know about that Spock, I look pretty happy.”

The pencil stills for so brief a moment Kirk wonders if it was intentional. “This is not a completely fair comparison. I am quite familiar with your face,” Spock explains to the confusion of Kirk.

“And I’m… not familiar with Bones’?”

Something shifts in the Vulcan’s expression as he straightens his neck, looking up at Jim for the first time in several minutes, if Kirk’s internal sense of time is operating properly. There’s a moment of something honest in Spock’s eyes, something strangely like panic, before it molds back to his passive neutral as he lays the pencil down.

“Forgive me, Jim.” Spock allows Kirk the time for his face to morph further into confusion, before continuing, “You have, of course, had plenty of occasion to study the Doctor’s facial anatomy. It is unforgivable for me, as your friend, to overlook this hardship of yours.”

Another laugh bursts out of Jim, unable to contain it, so deeply that he struggles to stamp it back down. He’s shaking his head, biting his lip, spinning the drawing towards him in dire need of a distraction. And it works, instantly, considering how hard it is to laugh without air in your lungs.

It’s him, alright. He shouldn’t be surprised at the accuracy considering how recognizable he had been even upside down but it’s still quite a bit to take in, the sheer amount of detail captured despite the one handed number of times that Spock had glanced up at him. He’s telling himself not to stare, telling himself that with the eidetic memory of a Vulcan it would be odder for this not to be the result, telling himself to say _something._

But Spock beats him to it, “Since I have proven myself to be an non-ideal teacher, perhaps you would still be agreeable to a chess match?”

Jim nods around a swallow, stashing the pad on the shelf under the table as he removes the board from it. He loses badly, once, and with a struggle, again, before Spock leaves past midnight.

Kirk finally succeeds in spending an entire night forgetting about the art room paintings, if only because he’s too busy staring at Spock’s sketch.

* * *

It isn’t Jim’s fault that he’s down on deck eight right after solemnly swearing to stay away, his self respect growling in disappointment the closer he is to it. Scotty had asked with badly feigned nonchalance if Kirk would be finding himself near the lower gym rooms anytime soon. Adding on, before getting an answer, that if the captain did just so happen to be in the area, no one in engineering would mind him taking a look at a towel dispenser who had gotten a little generous, spurting out three towels per individual request all while obliterating them into rags. Jim hadn’t really had a choice but to say yes, not with another offer of marriage on the line, an offer that Kirk was beginning to think may be his best option running.

And it isn’t Jim’s fault that it only ends up being an easy programming fix, most likely a malfunction in the installation of the newest shipwide update, which makes him barely late for dinner when he’s walking by the art studio door.

The room has become a sort of black hole for him. Larger in mass than your eyes would lead you to believe, the density of which was creating an unrelenting gravity.

It had been nearly unbearable being just a floor above as he stood in the sparring room yesterday, the pull of it only defeated with the aid of the equally distracting Spock in combat mode, the most beautiful painting in the world was no real contest for his Vulcan flushed green and panting. Jim can even feel the magnetism of the studio all the way up on deck one, a siren call that’s lured his daydreams in the duller moments the command chair offers. The worst though by far is the middle ground, the 0100s alone in his bed only three stories away with nothing but his dwindling dignity chaining him to his quarters.

So walking right past it, with nowhere else to be, and his restraint exhausted beyond repair, it really isn’t his fault that he’s inside of the door before he makes a conscience decision to relent to desire. And once he’s inside, eyes locking instantly on the newest painting in the far corner, it isn’t like telling himself to leave is going to do much good.

It’s the beach on Hoduhn, given away by the two pink moons in the sky and the unmistakable shell in the bottom left corner. It had belonged to a creature, Spock told him, called, ‘yrhunn buan,’ which translates to, ‘sleepy snail.’ The name alone had been enough to undo Jim but the spiral shell, similar to Earth’s oceanic ones with the exception of being perfectly cubular, had delighted him beyond repair. His Vulcan had announced that the shape was, _Lacking in evolutionary merit,_ where as Jim had countered with, _adorable,_ and they had split the difference by agreeing on,_ fascinating._

The base inspections had run an entire nine hour day, three hours past schedule which, given his recent luck, was probably at least an hour early. A pile of excuses had been handed for Kirk to sort through, lackluster justifications for the same basic shortcomings in upkeep that every Fleet infrastructure seemed to be suffering. So it had been with the beginnings of a migraine and a bitten-sore tongue that he had finally checked his comm upon exiting the facility past planet sundown.

“I am contacting you on your personal line as I do not believe our current predicament requires immediate prioritization of your time, considering the chosen wording of your last official update,” Spock’s message had read, so true to tone even in text that Kirk had been forced to smile. “The Enterprise is currently experiencing a small ion storm and while the ship is not threatened, Mr. Scott and I have agreed that waiting for the interference to pass is the most logical answer when compared to individual programmed transports or preparing a shuttle. Should you complete the inspection before we reevaluate at 2200, the away team and I will remain in the west cove where beam back had been previously scheduled.”

The following message, sent separate from the rest of Spock’s formal novel had simply said, “I will be available should you require further information for the sake of quickly locating us.” It had nearly made Jim blush as he mentally translated the offer into Standard, _I hope you get here soon,_ with the ease of someone familiar with his Vulcan’s unique brand of sentimentality.

Jim can vividly remember, as he laid his motorbike down on the sand, the overwhelming realization that the entirety of the vaguely infuriating day had all been worth it for this; A mild breeze it finding its way into his hair, mussing it up where the helmet had flattened it, as he made his way on foot to the foam of waves. Warm water lapping at his calves, a dark otherworldly sky, and a dozen of his crew’s best with him to enjoy it was all he could really ask for, he told himself, even as he stared down the beach towards a particular figure, wondering how the undertones of Vulcan skin would play as a canvas for the planet’s rose colored moonlight.

Spock had been locked up on a communicator call at Kirk’s arrival, one that had taken long enough to finish that Jim had eventually given up sneaking peeks down the shoreline at his First Officer. Instead, he let his mind be lulled by the sound of crashing water dragging against the beach and the faint smell of cinnamon their ocean gave off — a phenomenon he had thoroughly promised to let Spock explain to him over their next game of chess. He had just begun to wonder if, perhaps, they wouldn’t have to wait so long. They could find their own patch of this temporary eden, somewhere Spock could babble on about sciences far above the Captain’s pay grade in his normal engaging way, captivating enough that Jim wouldn’t even mind that the sand would surely find its way itchingly into his uniform. The mental image curled warm inside of Jim’s safest place, even when said Vulcan found his way over, announcing that the transporters would be back to optimal functioning parameters within minutes.

“I could order Scotty to throw a wrench at a control panel,” Jim had offered, mostly joking.

Spock had hummed in consideration from a few feet away, only entering the water the few inches that his trousers would allow. Kirk met him in the middle without thought, making his way back to the shallows until his toes slotted in between the tips of Spock’s boots. His balanced rocked with the waves, understanding that even a mild one could knock him forward, into his Vulcan.

“You are of the opinion that Mr. Scott has a deeper reverence for your authority than he does for the wellness of the Enterprise?” Spock’s own opinion on the subject clear in his tone.

Jim forced his smile into a frown, hands finding their home as fists on his hips while he sighed out, “Well then, Mr. Spock, plan B.” The Vulcan only raised an eyebrow curiously, this world seeming to have the effect of patience on him. “What are the chances you can convince Ensign Chekov to reprogram the transporters to be unable to distinguish between humanoid life and these sleepy little snails?” Batting at an empty shell with his foot.

Spock hadn’t directly answered, more than likely knowing that the young ensign would undoubtedly do almost anything for the First Officer, and being unwilling to admit it. Answering instead with another question, “What is your plan should the malfunction not be caught and our essences are spliced with these organisms?”

Ignoring the more obvious concerns of the literal ability to survive such a process, Jim schooled his expression into one of offense, hurt dripping from his tone as he said, “Are you saying you wouldn’t want to snail through the ocean with me? Just think of what I could get us into without an entire admiralty looking over my shoulder.”

Distraught isn’t too bold a word for the Vulcan’s reaction, though it settled into an annoyance ripe with affection, eyes holding Jim’s as he replied, “We would likely be dead within moments of the occurrence.” Adding, at Kirk’s urging stare, “Though, if the situation were to arise where I would have no other alternative other than to endure as a form of mollusk, you as a fellow yrhunn buan would make a suitable companion,” with what was obvious effort.

Jim’s grin only had time to bud when their communicators sounded in tandem. “Awl set fur transport on this end, sirrs!” the speakers announced in Scotty’s illustrious voice.

The level of disappointment he had felt as he waded out of the sea, edges of his rolled up pants wet and cool against the night air, had been nearly insufferable. Spock organized the first six of the away team for beamed up, followed quickly by the remaining fve. Jim had stood next to his Vulcan, boots still hanging from his fingers by their laces, as he had looked over to his only remaining company, oddly at a loss for something to say.

“Guess you’re stuck with me again, Mr. Spock,” he finally settled on, with idiotic obviousness.

Kirk had waited for the eyebrow raise, the amused smirk, the witty retort, though all he got in return from Spock was a factual, “By my own doing, Captain,” before he had ordered their transport at last.

There’s a softness to this painting that hadn’t been in the others, an obvious lack of overall detail instead of just fading out with distance from the man, the whole piece done almost in a fog that Jim doesn’t remember occurring that night. The brush strokes are wilder, the lines between the man and his universe blurring in places, and Kirk is left to wonder if it’s just his naivety in art that leaves him hoping for intentionality in the choice. He wants this to be more than merely a step in the process, a layer to be covered. Despite not being able to see the subject’s face, he looks happy there, shoulders relaxed and arms angling away from his body, fingers spread as his palms face the ocean winds blowing in. He’s closer in this one too, near enough to make an obvious focus, standing mid-calf in waves only a good throw away.

The water seems to glow where it touches his legs, casting him in a reverse spotlight, similar to an overly intense blue hued transporter pad. The brilliant halo, normally surrounding his chest is replaced by a milder, more literal one, around his head, bleeding into the pattern of stars that are painted to burn brighter in correlation to proximity to him.

Jim keeps squinting his eyes, tilting his head, as if that’s somehow going to help him determine the color of man’s uniform shirt, as if the angle is going to shed a new light in a predetermined color palette. It’s definitely not red, he can rule that out. Though the vaguely green coloring splits the difference between the remaining two, leaving him to wonder if the golden shine that burns above or the radiating blue from below is winning the war.

Because if it were command, and if this were painted in the likeness of someone actually there, then it would almost definitely be — Jim stares at the paleness of the man’s skin, the chestnut hair, the rolled pant legs, feeling a shake working into his own hands even as Kirk tells himself that there are plenty of less vain explanations.

Jim only becomes aware that his fingers are reaching out when they’re almost touching the surely still wet paint, snapping them backwards and turning to leave in one, quick, motion.

* * *

He can hear the rocks around them shifting in their precarious placement.

They’d been spotted by the pre-warp natives, natives who their scans had thoroughly proclaimed not to exist on JRT8878, and a hasty retreat had lead the away team of four down a winding switchback path. They had managed to make it three quarters of the way to the bottom before the tribe had made it to the brink of the cliff above them, the throng of the tribe skidding to a stop at the edge of the naturally sharp embankment. There had only been a grumble of warning, mixed in with the stomping of feet and the screaming of the confused indigenous people, before Jim saw the first of the boulders begin to shift.

There had been nowhere to go, nothing to do, and as the two security members ahead of them took off at a sprint Kirk barely had time to catch Spock’s fear filled eyes before the Vulcan was hurtling towards him. In what seemed like an instant, Jim was on the ground being yanked under the small ledge that the hillside of the path offered, looking nowhere near big enough to shield two humanoids.

The warm Vulcan body presses into his own as they lay on their sides facing each other, the natural wall against Jim’s back shaking with the force of the rockslide. Dread fills Kirk when he realizes he has no way to judge, from where he’s trapped on the inside, how much of Spock is being left exposed. He ridiculously wants to protest, as if they’d have time to switch, cursing his First Officer’s selflessness.

“Spock, I’m —”

Though even he doesn’t know the end of that sentence, _in love with you and so, so sorry,_ on the tip of his tongue when the deafening sound of the boulders crashing against the ridge directly above silence him as he attempts to pull Spock inward still.

What probably lasts merely minutes seems to go on forever, loud, and terrifying, as the rocks pile up around them, creating an alcove, until only the clattering of smaller stones can be heard around on the other side of their precarious shelter. In the silence of dwindling panic, Kirk suddenly becomes vividly aware of himself — the way his fingers are clenched into fists around the fabric of Spock’s shirt, his mouth pressing into the ridge of the Vulcan’s collarbone, face buried under Spock’s cheek in a manner that even the severely limited space couldn’t excuse. He manages to loosen the muscles in his hands, arms having nowhere to go as they remain squished in the nonexistent space between their chests. Jim can only tell himself to keep breathing as Spock’s own exhales continue to puff over the skin of his neck, never losing their tried and true measure. The Vulcan’s calm demeanor would be infuriating if only it weren’t so damn reassuring.

Spock doesn’t seem any more eager to move than Jim is, though probably leaning much further to the logical concern of what a sudden shift could result in than the nearly paralyzing fear that is only beginning to work out of Kirk’s system. The clattering has worked its way down to the mere tinkling of pebbles until the only sounds left are of lungs and heartbeats, the ugly noise of Jim’s harsh gasping swallows snapping the reverence of the moment in half. Spock moves at last, gently maneuvering onto his back which only serves to push his shoulder further into Jim’s sternum, the human’s fingers flexing against the urge to hold onto the arm as it brushes past them.

“I do not think it would be wise to attempt an escape on our own,” Spock states, solemn with conclusiveness.

Jim can hear Spock’s shifting much more clearly than he can see it, only a meager amount of light being let in where the rocks hadn’t perfectly tetrised together, though Kirk’s nearly sure the Vulcan was back to looking his way. His voice is louder, breath closer again, when Spock asks, “Are you injured, Jim?”

He stupidly shakes his head, adding quietly, “No, surprisingly not,” even though the motion of his neck that had probably been felt. “Jesus, that was lucky,” Jim says, a tremble still buzzing in his voice as he tries to find his normal volume, words squeezing out of him as the course of adrenaline still drives the mad beating of his heart.

“I do not believe in —”

“_Don’t,_ and that’s an order,” Jim cuts him off. “Don’t you even so much as think it until we’re out of here safely.”

Though his First Officer was almost definitely biting back an argument about whether their impending doom relied more heavily on gravity or what he chose to say, he did comply with the command.

A sigh trickles out of Kirk, struggling to relax, knowing there’s no use in working his muscles into any worse knots than they’d already be in from laying curled up on the gravel path. He attempts to summon the image of his own bed, the softness of his pillow, and his body, reluctantly, starts releasing some of the tension a near death experience tends to cause. That is, before Jim nearly goes into respiratory arrest at the sudden feeling of Spock’s hand sliding around near a very particular part of his anatomy.

The Vulcan stills at the sound of a small gasp that must come from Kirk, a pause passing before he calmly explains, “My communicator is in my pocket, Captain. I am attempting to reach it.”

Embarrassment floods Jim, making him furiously grateful for the lack of lighting, nodding his head as he manages, “Of course, Mr. Spock.”

It only takes a moment for Spock to find what he’s looking for, all of Kirk’s personal efforts centered on the idea of not shying his hips away tellingly. If his Vulcan notices that Jim’s breath has yet to regulate then he graciously fails to mention it, hailing the ship with his normal level tone.

“Enterprise, this is First Office Spock speaking. Do you read me, Enterprise?”

There’s barely a pause before Scotty’s voice, ripe with static, responds, “Readin’ ye, Sirr. Tho’ yer breakin’ up a bit on my end.”

Spock’s unseeable glance is a physical sensation and Jim wonders, silently, if the Vulcan can feel his own smirk as viscerally. They’ve both, obviously, calculated out where Spock’s request will end before he’s even been given the chance at asking it.

“Though the Captain and I are unharmed, we are in need of an emergency beam out. I do not believe us to be in immediate danger at this time, however, our current situation is quite precarious.”

“Aye, we’re awfly happy ta here fram ye, wat wit all th' lads jist told us. Got ‘em back oan board jist a minute ago, now.” One of the cogs in Jim’s brain starts easing it’s spin, just slightly, with the knowledge that the rest of the away team has safely made it back on board.

Another one, however, starts spiraling when Spock and his predictions are confirmed with a, “Yer readings a bit fuzzae on our end, Maister Spock,” the engineer, at least, sounding apologetic as he asks, “Are ye twos undergroond?”

“Effectively, yes,” Spock responds, his tone far more patient than the level Jim’s feeling. “Are you unable to lock onto our signals?”

The answer is the expected one.

The ten minute mark comes, and goes, with the engineer still dedicatedly working on it. “How doo ye always manage this keptin?” had been Mr. Scott’s last, unhelpful, comm to which Kirk has, resolutely, no answer.

He’s fighting the urge to fidget, losing in a desperate attempt to get circulation back into his arm, pinned below him in the awkward position he can’t seem to find his way out of.

“You should try to rest more comfortably, Jim.” The drop of title while technically on duty was as sure a sign as any that Spock’s expectation of a speedy rescue had been promptly executed. “Mr. Scott’s, _‘Just a wee tad longer’_, has already proven to be an inaccurate estimation,” adding, with what, for Vulcan standards, is blatantly a sigh, “Given the interference and the imperative to not disturb our surroundings, there may not be an immediate solution and you are already experiencing pain.”

Comfortably, only offers one solution in their current predicament: turning onto his stomach which will land the better half of him sprawled across his First Officer’s chest. 

“I’m fine Spock,” he insists, knowing he won’t make it another five minutes before he’ll have to concede, fingers already working their way back from numb to burn with painful pin-pricking. “Though I wouldn’t turn down a distraction.”

He can still only barely make out the hazy shape of Spock’s profile, Jim’s eyes have adjusted the best that they will, the low lighting not offering much in the way to work with. He reminds himself of the Vulcan’s distant feline ancestry, the way the barn cats used to navigate the Iowan nights with ease, no matter how badly the clouds hid the moon and stars, idly wondering how much clearer his expression is to his company. Kirk keeps his face neutral, telling his arm that they’ve been through worse.

Spock can either see him with the same clarity that the sharp fluorescent lighting of the mess hall provides or they both need to desperately check their interconnection since mindreading has suddenly become viable. No sooner has Jim’s expression gone blank is Spock asking, “Are you well, Jim? I was not aware that you experienced claustrophobia.”

Kirk’s first response is to correct him with a very honest, _Oh, that’s not what’s wrong,_ that’s nearly out of his mouth before he manages to pull it back. Spock’s only logical follow up would have to be the question, _If our current entrapment is not the source of your distress then what is?_ And that isn’t something Jim particularly wants to answer, not now and definitely not here. In the privacy of Spock’s sole company, Jim had dropped the act of trying to appear dignified a long time ago, but this particular patch of mess inside of him, the one that can barely keep from biting his lip at the thought of throwing a thigh over the Vulcan’s hips, wasn’t exactly one he was looking to create a billboard for.__

“Only a healthy dose of it,” Jim says instead, which isn’t technically a lie. “I don’t think I’m particularly illogical for thinking this setting is less than ideal.”

“We have been stuck in similar situations before and you have never mentioned it,” suspicion coloring Spock’s tone.

For a brief instant Jim let’s himself wonder about the validity of his codependency theory after all.

“I’m not sure this is exactly the same as being locked in a room that’s wide enough to twirl in or chased up a tree where I swing my legs as I please,” he tilts closer, a little, as he tries to wiggle his arm back behind him to the violent protesting of his shoulder. He relents, settling his weight back onto it. “Besides, I don’t recall ever shutting up those times either.”

There’s a moment when it’s just the two of them breathing, and Jim would swear that their cave of rock bends in on them, just slightly, with each inhale.

He would swear he can hear them shifting. Telling himself, as much as Spock, “I’m fine, really.”

The response is quick, lacking his usual transitional tact, as Spock asks, “Have you continued your…attempts at artistry?"

Jim can’t help it, the laugh that shakes out of him. His face ends up pressed into Spock’s shoulder once again, unable to fight his usual tendency to curl into himself when lost to a round of giggles. Only this time, when the chuckles fade to a small rumble in his chest, he somehow forgets to pull away.

His jaw moves over the softness of Spock’s shirt as he replies, “Attempt being the key word, but yes, I unfortunately am.”

“Are you still endeavoring to create a depiction of Doctor McCoy?”

His efforts to draw Bones had been left to that one, and only, time. It had gone so thoroughly amiss that no one could blame him for throwing in the towel so easily, though he deserved plenty of admonishment for thinking he’d be any better at drawing the person currently pressed against him. Drawing Spock, like most things involving the Vulcan, is a particular brand of intimidating. His features are unique in the same brand of his dry humor, his secret smiles, his long walking stride. Being so definitely uncommon, in such an extraordinary amount of ways, was exactly where Spock’s beauty bloomed, as far as Kirk was concerned.

The universe was chock full of James Kirks, but there was, quite literally, only one S’chn T’gai Spock.

His attempts, and there had been plenty, had all redefined the very concept of disastrous, though the trumpet of defeat had still not been sounded.

“I’m afraid I’ve moved on.” Jim tries his best to sound apologetic, “I’m sure you must be wildly disappointed, I know how badly you were looking forward to him being hung up in our bathroom.”

Kirk is soon made to concede that splitting the difference as far as his position is concerned is doing him no favors while creating a new problem. The original arm is still plenty furious, fading in and out of feeling where it’s still squished underneath him, though his forward tilt at least has shifted some of his weight off of it. However, as the blood trickles into the limb with such painful slowness that Jim has already resigned himself on it missing the mark as an actual solution, the arm that’s closer to their perilous ceiling is now is forced to twist awkwardly backwards in order to remain on his side of their space.

He adds it to the ever elongating list of things that he’s currently trying to ignore.

“Perhaps it is better that your progress has led you elsewhere.”

“And you? Has the creative bug bitten you lately?”

Spock’s head shifts towards him, probably on reflex, the side of his cheek, resting against the top of the human’s head for a moment before turning away just as quickly.

“My artistic inclinations have not been influenced by any insects." Continuing over Jim's best attempt at verbalizing an eye-roll, “Though I will admit that my course of inspiration continues to be particularly unrelenting.”

“Continues to be?” Jim repeats, the phrasing picking away at the corners of his mind as he tries to follow the mental string from one point to another, looking for the discrepancy he knows to be there.

“Yes, Jim.” It’s a languidly spoken answer, drawn out as Spock must perceive that Kirk is toying with something. He must conclude that Jim’s problem lies in the wells of doubt, deciding that insistence is his best course of action, “An extended period of time has passed since I last found myself lacking for muse. It has been a particularly long stretch for me.”

“How long?” Kirk asks, hitting his target of casual.

His acting chops must be up to par. So convincing, in fact, that Spock eagerly offers his reply of, “It has been months since my last prolonged pause, though more honestly it has been years since I truly lacked inspiration.”

“Months…” Jim repeats, almost solely to himself. Ignoring Spock’s _Captain? _when an inkling finally dawns comprehension. “You told me you hadn’t painted in awhile.”

“I do not recall those being my exact words.”

The hurt burning inside of him overpowers his self-imposed command to remain stationary, his right fingers flexing where they’re still trapped between the two of them. It’s a losing battle against the assault of stabbing needles, a sensation that has only just started to ease in his left.

Spock must feel the motion, he literally has to, and he’s quick to interpret the action, clearly glad for convenient change of subject. “You are experiencing discomfort,” he admonishes as his own hand lifts to trace the clumsy twist of Jim’s arm with obvious concern.

Kirk refuses to move it, going so far as to try and tug his elbow away, quickly finding that there’s resolutely nowhere else for it to escape to.

“You said,” Kirk bites back, unwilling to let this go without a proper explanation, “that you, _‘had in the past,’_ when I asked if you’ve ever painted.”

It’s funny, how he can sense the way Spock avoids looking at him, despite the fact that their positioning inhibits eye contact even if he were able to see it.

“_‘The past,’_” the Vulcan’s words once again taking the leisurely route, “does not have a specific time reference attached to it.”

Jim scoffs, one that is summoned from deep within his throat. “I don’t think yesterday counts in most people’s vocabularies.”

The war for his arm ridiculously continues.

"Your arm is likely to cramp if you leave it this way. I do not understand why you insist on remaining uncomfortable."

"And I don't understand why you insist on not answering a simple question."

Spock falls silent for a few seconds as Kirk tries not to count them off. His Vulcan has proven, time and again, that his trust in Jim is as factual as the blue of Earth's sky. Dishonesty, however small, is only ever arisen from the more sordid sources: misconceptions, shame and, most often, a desire to protect. Kirk compels himself not to focus on the ache of self-consciousness he suddenly feels, believing them to be past all this. Spock deserves a fair trial, the right to explain. He could remain furious, give into the desire to hide behind a wall of anger, or he can do what he always does, what had gotten them this far. Jim can continue to try, however vainly, to convince him that there’s very little, if anything at all, that Spock could do to be loved less.

With a grunt, Jim finally migrates onto his front, moving off of one arm as he wraps the other one over the slim Vulcan chest, his knee coming up to lay on Spock’s thigh, face further pressed into the skin of Spock’s throat. It’s selfish, and dangerous, to savor the feeling, the warmth and sturdiness of the body under his, the erroneous feeling of rightness. Rightness that turns to panic when Spock’s shoulder shifts in the resulting quiet, Jim interpreting it as a distressed request for space. Kirk attempts to jump away with a speed that is probably hazardous in their current situation, aware that there’s nowhere to go and hoping effort will count for something. But the Vulcan's long arm only maneuvers out of the way, removing itself as an uncomfortable barrier between their bodies, and slipping beneath the arch of Jim’s neck.

Kirk forces words to life, shoving them out of his body against the physical pressure of the silence. “There. Your excuse to not answer me has been rectified.”

He can feel the way Spock’s entire body seems to tighten, his bicep seizing below him as he weighs his options. Jim refuses to beg, knowing he, as a friend, has earned better than that. Spock must come to the same conclusion, muscles going limp with acceptance as he admits, “It was an intentional misdirection on my part, done without malice, though I admit I did not stop to consider how it would make you feel should you discover it.”

“And?” Kirk asks, patience uncharacteristically thin.

There’s a hesitation before the Vulcan’s steady baritone forms an earnest reply, “I apologize, Jim, for any distress that I have caused.”

“No," Kirk says, continuing quickly when the feeling of shock slips into the lines of Spock’s body. “No, that isn’t what I meant. I get that you’re sorry, Spock. I’m not sure you even know how to be cruel — there’s a reason you didn’t just tell me.” The Vulcan’s throat expands around a harsh swallow against Jim’s cheek, inspiring him to tilt his head up as if that will aid the delivery of sincerity, nose bumping against the underside of the angled jaw and holding there. “I forgive you, I’ll always forgive you. I just want to understand why.”

There isn’t an immediate answer, enough time passing that he’s beginning to doubt that an un-immediate one is being formed. “Have I done something wrong?” Jim's voice sounding as feeble as the space separating them.

He feels Spock shake his head, more of a twitch than anything, and Kirk wishes desperately that he could see the accompanying expression, to know how voluntary it had been.

“Vulcans paint to commemorate, to document, to honor the fallen, and to record the passing of events. It can be a logical format in which to relay certain information,” Spock says with the deliberation of repeated phrase, as if he is offering Jim a playback of a speech he had once received himself. “We do not paint to express what could be more efficiently said in words.”

“You can’t capture the beauty of a sunset in simple words Spock, no matter how much you try to.”

“My people would argue that there is no logic in trying to capture it at all, the sun will keep setting.”

Jim realizes his own breathing has finally changed only when he notices how his own chest puffs out against Spock’s ribs to the same tempo as the rise and fall under his palm. He presses down, gripping the fabric of the shirt gently, hoping any of it translates to the comfort he has no idea how to verbally express. To tell Spock he isn’t different would be a lie, and a crime against his character. However, to agree with him would do Kirk’s feelings on the subject absolutely no justice. There’s a wide middle ground, full of too honest truths, of well-meaning sentiments that, if worded the wrong way, could reveal far more than admiration.

Saying nothing is, no matter the risk, also nonviable.

“I imagine that people paint the stars for many reasons, Spock. And I don’t think there’s any rationale in minimizing the amount of beauty in the world or discouraging the act of sharing your version of it when the universe can be so ugly.” Even Jim’s impressed by the steadiness of his own voice, knowing the Vulcan must be lost for an answer as Spock’s breath is held, just a second too long. Kirk forces himself to find a way of requalifying what he’s saying in a more answerable way, “I’d like to see all the things you consider fascinating enough to paint, Spock, if you’d ever be willing to show me?”

Spock’s jaw muscles tighten against the top of Jim’s head, bicep flexing as his fingers clench in the small space they’ve found between Kirk’s back and the cliff. His mouth opens once without a response before closing, Jim telling himself to wait as he counts off the thudding of Spock’s quicker heart. He should be imagining them anywhere but here, somewhere he could see the Vulcan’s face, smell anything other than the spice of Spock’s shampoo, in a space he’d be granted enough room to think beyond cataloguing the points of contact between them. Somewhere that Kirk could come up with something adequate to say.

Spock’s mouth opens, again, around a, “Jim —”

“We’re finlly ready oan our end, Keptin. Ye twos ready tae beam up?”

The relief that so clearly floods the Vulcan’s body is surprisingly painful to witness, leaving Jim to wonder what could be so horrible that Spock could consider Kirk capable of callous judgement. Kirk had been embarrassed, and rightly so, when Spock had found his sketchpad full of failures, but he hadn’t ripped it from his hands to lock it away either. He thinks of the newest pages filled out, full of underwhelming renditions of his Vulcan officer, of how Jim would feel should the worst of those be seen. It isn’t the same, he tells himself, he understands that it isn’t. Kirk is loud and brash, never having met a self-imposed silence he hadn’t immediately wanted to break, especially where Spock was concerned.

Jim has always had a desire to be known, to be seen, to be a complete piece in the eyes of Spock. It isn’t personal, he reminds himself, or tries to. He pictures the paintings in the art room, of waterfalls and moon rises and of the one man that Kirk thinks is wearing a command gold shirt. He tells himself adamantly that his comparison of the away team members logs for those mission means nothing definitive, could mean nothing at all, Spock’s eagerness to rid himself of this conversation doing little to support his half-cocked, exhaustion fueled, 2AM theories.

“Keptain?” The communicator sounds again. “Do ye read us, Sirr?”

“Yes, Mr. Scott, we read you,” Spock answers without so much as having to move a finger, and Jim is suddenly left to wonder if the Vulcan has really been lying there, gripping his communicator the entire time. “We are ready for transport when you are.”

Jim’s back groans in protest when he tries to stretch his legs out, the ground underneath him having transformed to the even less comfortable solidness of the transporter pad. Spock appears before him, poised and unphased, when Kirk finally works himself into a seated position, the Vulcan’s hand extended outwards in offering. Jim’s ego is past the point of putting up a fight, holding up his forearm which Spock too easily pulls him up by.

He’s on his feet when Bones’ voice, loud and unhappy, orders them both to sickbay through the comm on his hip, no happier when Jim ends his, “On our way,” with a quip about how McCoy must be running behind, Kirk usually not being allowed to breathe the ship’s recycled air before receiving the Doctor’s welcoming greeting.

Spock’s cleared for quarters almost instantaneously, ignoring both Bone’s begrudging tone and Kirk’s eye roll, one of his fiercer ones. Knowing better than to give McCoy the chance to change his mind, Spock rises from the bed next to Jim’s, their eyes meeting briefly in an easily interpreted look, an apology from the Vulcan and an order to abandon ship from Kirk, as the heart of Bone’s tirade begins.

When Spock interrupts, a few seconds later, as he stands by the door, his expression is pleased, with a hint of downright mirth, and an undercurrent of something Jim can’t wrangle to a definition.

Though Spock only says, “It was always my intention to share them with you eventually.” And Kirk’s not sure about what it says about himself that he doesn’t need the pause Spock grants him in order to find the context of that statement. “It is not my desire for there to be secrets between us,” he adds before turning to leave, the human not missing the way Spock’s head quirks back, just slightly, towards him before taking a left down the hall in the direction of the lifts.

Bones stares silently at the side of Kirk’s face until the captain finally turns, his mouth open around a poor explanation.

He cuts Jim off, saving him the trouble with a, “For the love of God, don’t tell me. Put me down for all the secrets he doesn’t want,” that’s practically a plea.

* * *

He admits that he doesn’t have an excuse to be anywhere near the rec rooms and though that may not make the fact that he’s resolutely headed to the studio any better, he at least is no longer trying to pretend that his actions have reasonable causes. No one is getting hurt, he reasons, other than possibly himself, and the desire to be here has started to burn hotter than Jim can withstand. It feels almost as if he’s staring at a bunch of dots on a map, and someone is telling him that he alone can find the common theme, only he swears that he can’t.

There’s a piece of him, one that the battle to stomp down has yet to conquer, that warns that you can’t find the answer if you’ve been sitting on it the entire time, refusing to acknowledge the lumpy condition of your seat. It’s making him crazy, it’s making him _angry,_ feeling as if his own self has never been so conflicted before, over something so silly as anonymous art.

Though his feelings, having raged to a roar over the last few days, are instantly quelled by the sheer force of what overcomes him when his eyes fall towards their favorite corner of the room without pretense as the door whooshes open. Jim has to compel himself to breathe through the unveiling of what must be indisputable proof that he is, once and for all, losing his mind in the form of the new, fourth, painting.

In the center of the piece, there’s a flower, one Jim thoroughly knows to grow on JRT8878, where him and Spock had just been held captive by a rockslide only a week ago.

Prior to their interruption by the natives, which in turn lead to their hour long entrapment, their mission had merely been one of documentation, an analysis of whether the planet should be considered as a possibility for future settlements or research facilities. It was the type of tedious task, ripe with repetition, that Kirk would normally loathe. Rather, he had landed himself in dire depths of delight as he had walked along with Spock, the fairly barren land an odd kind of beautiful, as his officer cataloged the planet’s sparse fauna growth.

Nearly an audible thing in itself, Kirk’s grin had combined with a childish, “Oh, look, Spock!” as he pointed towards the quite obvious brilliant turquoise flowers, appearing as they had turned sharply around a bend in the path.

Jim had crouched down to examine them more closely, though with far less scientific intent than Spock’s as the Vulcan joined him, tablet being worked over with diligent speed. The captain had waited, patiently, until Spock’s gaze had raised to the point of Kirk’s fingers pinching a stem, brown eyes closely missing a roll as he nodded his head reluctantly in permission for Jim to pick it.

The flower twirled between his fingers momentarily as he stood in waiting, turning back towards Spock at the telltale noises of his gear being packed away.

“Are you ready to proceed, Captain?” The Vulcan’s tone was only slightly teasing, though he had been the one to insist on Jim tagging along despite the human’s insistence that he would only slow him down, per usual.

“I suppose,” Kirk responded dramatically before allowing the smiling to win again, holding his beloved flower out to Spock. Insistent with a, “Blue’s more your color, after all,” when the Vulcan didn’t immediately reach for it.

Spock continued to politely refuse with a comment about a blue shirt that Kirk had worn on a shore leave, months before then, and how he had found the hue of it to be quite complementary to Kirk’s skin tone.

In the painting, the same flower is being held between warm toned fingers, the hand stretching out towards the viewpoint. The ground below is lost to the golden haze that surrounds the arm, the tips of issued Fleet boots just barely visible, the glow just dull enough to make out the distinct three shiny rank markings on the undoubtedly command shirt sleeve.

Jim, even as his heart races to the point of dizziness, is not too far gone to realize that can mean one of only two things:

Firstly, someone is stalking him and his First Officer. Someone who just happens to be on all these different away teams, someone whose assignments planetside just happen to be nearby to theirs, and someone who just happens to have the desire to spend all these ridiculous hours capturing these moments into works of art. After this many years captaining a starship Jim has come to the conclusion that virtually nothing one can dream of is truly, by definition, impossible. Though this scenario may be the epitome of improbable.

The second, while much more plausible, is a scenario that his brain is almost refusing to entertain, as if it doesn’t want to accept the idea as a hypothesis lest it be ripped away from where hope is already beginning to develop despite his caution. This painting is very obviously of Jim, which would make it more likely than not that they have all been paintings of Jim. And the artist —the one who paints the cosmos as if the natural order is set alight by his essence— is Spock.

As the thought settles, and the validity of it confirms, Jim finds his body slumping into a chair with such force that it feels for a moment as if the gravity controls have just intensified. He’s still sitting there gawking, too stunned to move when the door opens behind him, Marshalls revealing herself when she makes her way into his vision. Her face is full of playful reprimand, that is, until she actually gets a chance to look at him, a beat passing as her face transforms into something that manages to merge pity and smug into one emotion.

“You finally figured out that they’re of you then?” she asks as she walks past him to the storage closet.

There’s one brief, horrified, moment when Kirk doesn’t understand. Or _thinks _he’s beginning to. She’s so confident in the subject — she must be involved — which means that Spock isn’t. Marshalls is a fine crewman, one who received both an official commendation and a more personal raving review from her last Captain. She’s more than kind, her fair share of funny, and in another universe perhaps Jim could lose sleep over the green of her eyes, but in this one he’s quite decidedly loyal to ones that shine a deep chestnut.

But that doesn’t entirely make sense, or any at all, when combined with her constant attempts to meet the artist. Perhaps it was all a cover up, perhaps she was always just down here to work on the pieces — though he’s interrupted her before and she was never working on — she hadn’t even been on the away teams —

She interrupts his spiraling with a, “Should I assume by the utterly dramatic look on your face that you’ve formed a theory about who the artist is and you’re not pleased about it?”

“I’m not sure,” he says, looking back over to her carefully as she continues to pull supplies off the shelf. “I…do you know them?”

“What?” Her tone full of clear irritation. “I’ve told you that I don’t,” though her fingers come to a slow crawl as she flips through the canvases before halting entirely, her head whipping around in the next moment to stare at him with wide, almost offended eyes.

“You’re not suggesting that I —”

Jim cuts her off, his hands coming up in a defensive pose, with a hurried, “You were just so sure that it was me!”

“Anyone with a working retina could accomplish that much,” she only huffs as Jim continues his lengthy apology in the language of hand gestures. Her voice is calmer when she continues, “To be fair you didn’t see the observation deck one.” He prompts her with only a pleading look, “There was one of an eye, up close. They used a small canvas but the level of detail that they managed was obnoxious.”

“And the observation deck?”

“One of those huge windows was being reflected across a distinctly hazel iris.” She continues when Jim doesn’t reply, “That was during the acrylic phase, if they were doing that level of detail with oils I would have put a hit out for them,” as if that’s even in the same hemisphere as what Kirk is currently worried about. “Now the water colors were less obvious but if you needed the shirt to get you there, well, they do you think you look good in gold, Captain.”

Something, finally, begins adding up.“You said there were only six of them.”

For a moment, she only blinks back for a moment before her own dawning arrives. “Yeah, six oil ones. Well, nine now. They do a series of about a dozen before moving on, I don’t always catch all twelve depending on how fast they can work with the medium, but I assume there’s a pattern.”

“And how many mediums have there been?”

“Just five, that I know of.” She plows over Jim’s pathetic puff of a gasp, his face doing something terribly desperate if her grin is as cruel as Kirk thinks, elaborating before the last revelation has even sunk in, “About a week into my assignment, I finally made my way down here and I found a sketchpad on the table. At first I was just trying to figure out who to return it to but I may have taken my time skimming through.” Jim doesn’t ask, not really sure how much more he can take, but she offers anyways, “It was full of face studies, done in charcoal.” She adds, speaking especially slow, as if attempting to explain Faulkner to a roomful of pre-alphabet toddlers, “They were of you, if that’s not completely clear by now.”

“A week,” Jim backpedals. “You’ve been assigned to the Enterprise for —”

“Two years just three months past, Sir,” making sure to leave the title sounding as sarcastic as possible.

Jim’s hands find their way to his face, “I’m assuming you have a brilliant reason for not sharing this information with me.”

“What exactly was I supposed to do? New little ensign on the Fleet’s flagship, knocking on the Captain’s quarters doors, stolen sketchpad in hand, _Excuse me, Sir, but I believe you have a secret admirer. Shall we track them down together?_ I’ll pass. Besides, you have to get that you’re the posterboy for half the Federation. Someone going heart eyes over you isn’t exactly red alert worthy,” she jokes. Kirk is enough of himself, at least, to raise an eyebrow at her, summoning what’s left of his energy in a smirk. The force of the responding scoff leaves Jim worried for her esophagus, eating nearly all of the, “Not fucking likely,” which gives life to a much needed laugh from him.

“I think I’ve given you plenty of more recent opportunities to crack open that bit of intel without looking like a schoolkid tirelessly cranking at the rumor mill.”

She’s not even trying to be kind when she replies, “_Some people,_” as if tones could wound, “like to be in the center of the fray but I don’t, Captain. For all I knew this was an ex-partner of yours or someone you’ve already turned down, someone incompatible in another way. Art’s a personal thing and there’s a reason they haven’t shown you. It wasn’t my place to drag you to the very apparent conclusion.”

“How noble of you,” he says, allowing himself to sound properly annoyed, even if he does understand.

She ignores the tone, like Jim knew she would. “But you do know who the artist is, don’t you?”

Jim looks away from her, back to the painting. If it were a holo of the events, Spock would be plucking the flower from his fingers, holding it delicately as they squabbled about who looked better in blue, before the Vulcan’s expression tinged green as a decision was made in the lines of his eyebrows. His hand would raise, tucking the stem behind Jim’s ear as his own blush overtook Spock’s in intensity, losing the war of eye contact as Kirk quickly ducked his face towards his feet as if his boots needed a quick checking on.

Spock would ask, “This is the Earth fashion is it not?” To which Jim would merely nod, not trusting his vocal chords to produce anything more than a litany of adorations. “I believe this current evidence to be validation of my theory, Jim.”

And Jim would look up to say something of worth, a, _Just kiss me already, or learn to be colder, because this is just torture by another name,_ sitting on his tongue when he spotted the natives over the Vulcan’s shoulder.

The flower had been lost somewhere in the sprint.

Marshalls summons him back to the present with a clearing of her throat. “Yes,” he finally answers. “I know who it is.”

“Well, at least you’re both stupidly in love with each other, saves me the guilt of being involved.” Taking only a look at whatever Jim’s face is doing before adding, “Oh, please. Let’s not have that debate. How many of your platonic friends have you done 57 portraits of?”

“I don’t think that a very fair question considering I’ve only been drawing, if we can even call it that, for —” something like a groan from her cuts him off. “And I did create one monstrosity that was supposed to be Leonard McCoy.”

She waves an arm behind her, towards the painting. “Did you have any intention of it looking like that?” she asks, tone signifying she’s only going to accept one answer.

He looks at it again, the way the world glows warm despite the overcast day he remembers it was, the halo of his chest burning so fiercely you can barely see the smile he now recognizes as his own at the top of the canvas. No, he thinks with a shake of his head, there’s only one person who compromises his reality so thoroughly.

“Permission to speak freely, Captain?” Her voice is terse, at best.

“Oh God, you haven’t been?”

She seems to accept this as a granting, her face growing bolder as she states, clearly, “Grow a pair, Kirk.”

“What am I supposed to do? Just barge in on him and explain that I’ve come to the conclusion that he’s in love with me after stalking his artwork, unknowingly, for months?”

“Him…” she says slowly, eyes growing wide suddenly when she snaps her mouth shut.

“What —”

“Nothing!” she says too quickly, voice tilting towards chipper. “You two are just going to make a lot of people very happy when all the bets are finally settled.” She starts again before Jim can get a question in, “Why don’t you tell him how _you _feel instead of asking how he does. Most people tend to think that’s a good place to start.”

“It seems a little boring of a response to all this,” he says, gesturing to the art room as a whole.

“So come up with your own grand gesture. Though I’d skip the five dozen paintings, you’ve wasted enough time.”

Jim nods, looking towards the pile of art supplies she’s back to removing from the closet. He stands and moves towards the door as he halfheartedly says, “Thank you for your candor, Marshalls. I’ll just be —”

“Captain!” she calls after him, continuing before he can even turn around, “When you do talk to him, could you tell him something for me?”

The genuineness of her voice has Kirk nodding his head without really thinking, his stomach dropping as her mouth twists into something entirely too pleased. “Tell Commander Spock that he shouldn’t keep unsealed charcoal in a notebook like that. Seeing those sketches smudged was heartbreaking.”

Jim leaves without comment, tellingly red.

* * *

He doesn’t have a plan, per se, which really ought to be the tagline of his autobiography. He has an endgame with a vaguely planned route on how he may get there, and, honestly, he’s worked with far less. At least, that’s what he’s telling himself as he pulls up a chair in the studio deep into gamma later that day, a smaller 16x24 canvas propped up in front of him with a palette of acrylics he plans on fully abusing beside him.

A main flaw in his not-plan is how much of it resides out of his control. He needs a certain amount of time to get this act against God starting to look like _something,_ even if that something only falls under the broadest term of “an attempt.” However, he also doesn’t know how many days he’ll be able to sit here, stallingly tweaking it, after it’s completed before he’ll have to call it done, for better or worse.

His nerves seem to have hit an all time high, jumping like a timid child in a haunted house every time he so much as thinks he hears the whoosh of the door. The door which, in actuality, opens a total of once for an engineering crewman who smiles at him in surprise, though she doesn’t seem to mind the company as she fixes a wayward panel

The second night doesn’t offer anything either, or the third, the fourth and fifth resulting in more gamma traffic, to the point that Kirk wonders about the sufficiency of their arts funding. Though, despite the influx in visitors, no one approaches The Flower Painting other than to sing its praises more closely. And the captain himself, his anxiety still plucking at each new arrival, hadn’t summoned any more attention than one would accept from the various faces.

Jim’s own painting is coming along, though it looks more like something a parent would hang on one of the old metal refrigerators some midwesterners’ homes still boast than anything deserving of praise. _An attempt, _he reminds himself. _Effort always counts for something._

Bridge shifts have been tense in a new, one sided kind of way. Despite his best efforts, Jim hasn’t been quite able to keep the stress of disquietude out of shoulders, his eyebrows raising a little too high every time Spock requests his attention, as if he may be about to profess his undying love in front of all of alpha. And then, of course, the fear of being outstandingly wrong ticks at his fingers, jostling his knees, leaving him fidgeting in the chair the way he only does when Starfleet has ordered them into something that smells particularly bad. Burning through gamma in the studio hasn’t helped, Jim’s academy years of living solely off naps proving to be a decent warm up, though eventually someone may have something to say about Jim spending beta curled around his pillow.

The most likely someone being the very same person who suddenly looms over his right shoulder, science station abandoned.

“Mr. Spock,” Jim honestly trying to level his voice. He manages it at the cost of licking his lips, a nervous tell that the Vulcan’s eyes follow knowingly. “What brings you to my neck of the woods?”

But Spock doesn’t roll his eyes at the casualness, doesn’t steam roll over the friendly banter, or outright comment on the uncaptainly vernacular as he always does when Jim acts such a way during shift. Instead, his eyebrows come together, face shifting in what is obvious concern, so blatantly an emotion despite the multitude of people that could turn around and see it, should the common sight of them nonchalantly conversing in the middle of the bridge be considered worth anyone’s attention.

“What’s wrong?” Jim asks again, softer, his own apprehension silencing the desire to squirm.

Spock leans in, lowering his voice, discreetly matching the hum of the ship as he says, “It was my intention to make a similar inquiry of you, Captain.”

Jim can feel the muscles in his face go lax. He knows the purple under his eyes must be burning a little more intensely, that his absence from the mess hall has probably been noted, and he’d be more than offhandedly asking about it should the roles be reversed in this. The _Are you avoiding me?_ is screaming loudly in worried brown eyes, probably at great expense to the asker, and Kirk mentally kicks himself for being so short sighted.

“I’m fine,” Kirk offers, a genuine smile pulling at his mouth, despite the lingering feeling of his own guilt, at seeing the plain disbelief on his Vulcan’s face. “Chess tonight? My place?”

The worst of it eases at the offer, though a firmness lives on in Spock’s voice when he confirms, “I shall be there at 1800,” before making his way back to his scanner, a lack of surprise in his cool expression when he looks over his shoulder to find Jim’s eyes watching him.

Jim’s limbs remain calm at the cost of his lip, accepting that he’ll have bruised it bright red before six ever comes.

* * *

There’s something about a chessboard between them that aligns things, like righting a ship against the waves. He chuckles at Spock’s jokes, at his refusal to recognize them for what they are even more so. Letting his smile burst with pride when his Vulcan acknowledges at least one of Kirk’s puns as “Grammatically adequate” which, translated out of Vulcan, was a close cousin to hysterical laughter.

It’s so normal, in fact, that Jim nearly forgets about his abomination, nearly finished, on deck eight right up until the moment Spock checkmates him, leveling out the win-loss rate of the night, and proclaims himself in desire of rest if only to kindly bring up how badly Kirk must appear to need it.

“If you should require me in any way,” the Vulcan offers before Jim has even begun putting away his pieces, still relishing in his victory, “I encourage you to comm me, regardless of the hour.”

The gentleness of his voice and the sincerity in his eyes makes Jim wonder, as he often does, how anyone ever used ‘robotic’ in the same sentence as ‘Spock.’

“I think I’m old enough to handle a nightmare or two on my own,” Kirk’s quip falling flat with Spock’s expression.

“What one can do, and what one must do, are not the same. You are not alone, therefore there is no reason for you to endure in that manner, unless solitude is somehow beneficial to the process.”

He knows to say yes to such a thing, even casually, would only make him a liar and so Jim asks instead, “And what about Vulcans? Do you ever dream, Spock?”

Kirk expects a sidestep, a statement that twists around an answer, avoiding it with frightening precision as Spock winds a tale of logic and rationale. He’s fully unprepared for Spock’s honest answer of, “Yes.”

Kirk means to say something lighthearted, to turn back around to safer ground. To give Spock the same offer of comfort he has just received with a well meaning retort about learning a Vulcan lullaby. He has absolutely no idea where his, “Am I ever in them?” is summoned from.

Spock finishes putting the chess set away with methodical attention, even for him, tucking it on the shelf under the table once he can no longer pretend that there is a piece left askew. He stares at Jim’s hands before his eyes skip abruptly to Kirk’s, holding them for a brief moment before he relents. “Yes.”

Something like relief floods Spock’s face at the sudden reappearance of Jim’s smile, watching as it grows to the point that his cheeks cause his eyes to squint, refusing to lose the game of chicken when it comes to eye contact as Kirk finally allows himself to joke, “All of the good ones?”

The Vulcan admits defeat first, if only to roll his eyes as he stands, the reprimand only bringing back the chuckle, as Jim raises his hands in surrender, dramatically mumbling as he moves to get up, “Alright, alright.”

Jim follows him to the captain’s entrance to their bathroom, the means of Spock’s escape, for no other reason than to force Spock to squeeze by, the Vulcan’s robed chest brushing against his arm where his skin’s exposed below the short sleeve of his black shirt.

The second door is open to the First Officer’s quarters, the Vulcan halfway through it, when Spock turns back, Jim assumes, for his usual scolding about the importance of sleep when it comes to the functioning of the inferior human anatomy before making a hasty retreat. Tonight was not made for the beaten path it seems.

Spock’s eyes meet his with their version of playful vigor, the right side of his mouth pulling up in his Vulcan grin, his arms hanging loosely by his sides with ease as he says belatedly, for a third time, “Yes, Jim.”

The simple phrase leaves Kirk staring at the door, wondering how he ever thought he was winning.

* * *

Jim’s already pulled out his sleepwear when he makes the decision to pay homage to his new tradition and at least make an appearance in the art room without really understanding why. It’s been a long day, with his napping time spent being chased around a chessboard. He also fully appreciates that the likelihood of Spock — no longer entertaining the thought that he and the artist may not be the same for fear of completely combusting — heading down there after a similar beta shift is slim in itself. But if he were to skip it and make his way there tomorrow to find that The Flower Painting had been worked on while he slept…well, Kirk would rather doze under one of the tables than deal with that emotional fallout.

His painting is still sitting where he left it, on an easel right next to — he refuses to allow himself to falter in thought — Spock’s. It makes his look even worse in comparison, though no one seems to have mistaken it for trash in his absence which really ought to have been the goal he set at the beginning. Though he thinks, at least he hopes, that the setting he’s attempting to recreate is recognizable.

It’s of a particular patch of J-Weghn, a class M planet nearer to Earth than they’ve been in months now, the first alien planet his boots had shared with Spock’s after taking over for Captain Pike. The weeks prior had been a tedious start to their eventual friendship, their preceding reputations doing them no favors. Spock had been withdrawn, even for him, a reaction that was not wholly unexpected given what Kirk had heard of how close the Vulcan had been with Pike. There was no hostility, nothing more than a quiet acceptance, that Jim found himself too eager to work his way around, his normal level of patience failing him when it came to figuring out how to unlock his resident Vulcan.

Kirk and Spock had safely beamed down along with an away team for what was a simple drive by mission, checking in on the regrowth of a planet that had nearly been destroyed by a sudden volcanic eruption that had occurred before it’s predicted date by nearly a century. The Fleet had rallied, saving nearly all of J-Weghn’s residents before the pyroclastic flows had reached the denser population centers and then having found them a new planet to call home decades before Jim’s recruitment. With the environment still so unstable, and the cause of the evacuation an inevitable recurring event, J-Weghn would be an unlikely choice of settlement for future Starfleet projects and yet the administration liked to detour the occasional ship there for a progress report.

The captain had deliberately stuck close to Spock upon transporting planetside under the guise of ‘observing his Science Officer’s methods,’ an excuse that would have probably annoyed just about anyone else on the ship, not wanting to be babysat. Only the Vulcan had appeared, if anything, impressed by the diligence. Jim began winning points left and right as he managed to hold his own in a discussion about the young planet’s ecological shifts in a three-way comparison to both Vulcan’s and Earth’s infancy. In fact, Spock had looked downright pleased as Kirk waxed poetic about the atmospheric conditions that led to Vulcan’s vastly arid environment, right up until the moment he hadn’t.

Too busy watching Spock’s hands twitch at his side, desperate to know what that particular tell translated to, Kirk had lost himself to his thoughts. Jim wondered if his stoic companion was barely containing a more excited gesture, noting the way his delicately pointed eyebrows dared give away his eagerness on his otherwise neutral face when Kirk had missed the sudden pitch of the path they were on. His ankle rolled to the side, sending his body the way of Spock. The Vulcan tensed, his inhuman control of his muscles and balance nearly allowing him to keep himself upright — and it would have, if it hadn't been for the perfectly placed rock.

Swearing as he leapt to where Spock finally settled in the dirt, Jim had then apologized as if he had been caught cussing by his mother. His usual charm continued to fail him as he reached for the Vulcan’s hand in way of a helpful lift up, only to drop it suddenly when the reason of Spock’s timidity in taking it was fully realized, almost toppling him back over. His comment about the coloring of the Vulcan’s blood stained palm had not been exactly tactful either.

Jim had walked along beside his quiet First Officer, all but scuffing the toes of his boots in the gravel as he wallowed in self-disappointment. That is, until he had dared a sideways look in prelude to a fourth apology to find a smile living in the Vulcan’s suddenly warm eyes. Spock hadn’t spared him more than a glance in his peripheral, an eyebrow raise the only mention of the human’s blatant staring for several steps, before the Vulcan seemed to accept that deterring him would take a bit more effort.

“If I may recommend you focusing your attention on the path, Captain, as I seem to be the recipient of your misfortunes,” Spock had finally said, in a tone that was flooringly ripe with amusement.

Lost for words and pink with minor embarrassment, Jim had obeyed, responding weakly, “Thank you, Mr. Spock.” Words he could barely hear over the rush of his own heart.

He’d been pulled away by a shuttle malfunction only moments later, suspiciously glad for having an excuse for distance and a chance to reset. Only to be again undone upon his return, his stomach swirling at the sight of Spock under a particularly blossom filled tree. The Vulcan would cite it as, “An adequate shelter for our lunch,” going so far as indulging Jim when he pulled out his tablet and half jokingly challenged his First Officer to a game of checkers. Kirk had lost in record time, never having been so delighted to be outmatched in his life.

What he chose to, at the time, excuse as fondness would unrelentingly flourish into something unfathomably full, tangling itself into the very corners of his being.

In the quiet of the empty studio, a deafening part of him begins to beg for the end of this. He could go, right now, and raise Spock from his sleep. Jim can be a herald of his own captivation, the desires of his heart delivered plainly with a few simple words and he can be done with this aching. Professions sung boldly, results be damned.

In the exact moment that he decides that he loves Spock enough to be made a right fool for it, the studio door opens with a crisp _whoosh_. Then there is only an aching hesitance followed by measured footsteps.

Jim’s already smiling before he hears the “Captain?” asked in a familiar, concerned, voice.

“You finally showed up.” Kirk lets himself laugh, finally turning around when Spock’s silence persists. “I never again want to hear you speak badly of human fortitude.”

It’s clear on his face that Spock has no idea on how to reply, what could be nervousness causing the Vulcan to suddenly toy with the strap of the messenger bag crossing over his chest, as if it were in immediate need of adjustment. His attention shifts away from Kirk, sliding over to the painting Jim’s clearly working on, probably hoping that will offer him better context to work with.

Willing to help, Kirk begins to say, “It’s supposed to be of —” only to be cut off by Spock’s, factual, “J-Weghn.”

Jim feels his eyebrows raising, surprised any sense can be made of the mess he’s created. Spock seems to have trouble interpreting the emotional response, his own brows curling up as he defends himself.

“That is assuming this is intended to be a depiction of a planet we know to exist and not a hypothetical one,” he explains as he finds a place to stand next to Jim, their average distance of none left between their shoulders.

“Oh no, you got it in one,” Jim assures, finding himself leaning into the Vulcan’s limited space, hoping that proximity will somehow aid in his attempts at candor. “I was just shocked you could tell.”

“These are lotyhn plants which we have only discovered in the unique mineral composition of J-Weghn’s soil,” Spock offers, pointing to where Kirk’s drawn them lining the crude path and adding, with uncharacteristically carefulness, “You compared the hue of their leaves to the wound that had occurred on my palm during our visit there.”

“You mean when I bodily assaulted you and then layered my cultural insensitivities in as repayment?”

Jim wants to look at him, wants to play his usual game of counting the creases in Spock’s bottom lip, until the Vulcan caves under the focused attention and does something scandalous, like lick or bite it or, God forbid, burn green with a blush. But he can’t bring himself to so much as glance, the rush of blood through his veins somehow immobilizing him.

“Your subsequent apologies were more than sufficient,” Spock says slowly, a small kindness.

“I felt so horrible when I got the comm from the second landing party about their shuttle refusing to power down, I wasn’t sure what I’d return to after an hour of tinkering with it, leaving you to stew in the insult,” Kirk barrels onwards. “But when I came back you were just sitting under this tree, reading an antique paperback of all damn things, waiting for me.”

Surprisingly steady, Jim’s arm reaches out to where a silhouette of Spock sits below the tree’s branches, somehow looking more like a deformed rabbit than anything. Though the Vulcan beside him doesn’t seem to mind, following Kirk as the human’s impelled to inch forward for his fingertips to make contact with the canvas. The patch of grass below the figure is greener, the sun just a little brighter where it highlights his head and shoulders, the yellowest petals falling around him. It was the first time, at least that he noticed, that the world was off-kilter around Spock, a subtle start to something it would take Jim a year to fully realize. That Spock’s beauty was an overpowering force, overflowing to color the world around him.

“You had not been clear on how detailed you desired your observation of my work to be. I had decided it was a greater waste of resources to repeat my activities a second time for your review, rather than simply be unproductive for a short period,” Spock explains.

But Jim’s quick to counter, “You didn’t even eat without me.”

Spock’s soft noise of acknowledgement seems to be the only response he’s willing to give. Jim’s arm drops away from where his fingers were still tracing the outline of Spock, the normal flair of electricity crackling between them with a startling spark as his hand brushes the back of the Vulcan’s. Kirk presses them together, his knuckles finding their way into the valley of Spock’s, slotting together like puzzle pieces.

“I just wanted you to know,” Jim squeezes out of himself, the way one fights with that last squirt of toothpaste, “that I’ve seen your paintings, and I understand. I see it too.” He forces himself to finally look at the Vulcan beside him, meeting eyes that are brimming with an almost human wonder.

Wonder that quickly transforms into something that may be a chuckle for anyone else as Spock twists away to reach into the messenger bag that’s crossed over his shoulder. Without pause, he pulls out a sketchpad much smaller than the one Jim had been given, handing it to Kirk with a finality that somehow manages to be playful. He stares back, book clenched between his fingers, until it’s clear that Spock won’t be offering an explanation as of yet, waiting until Jim flips open the cover to reveal a pencil sketch of a slightly younger version of himself, contorted in the captain’s chair to glance over his shoulder towards the viewer.

“Startdate 30484.7, which you may recall as the date of your second alpha shift,” Spock’s voice cutting into Jim’s stunned reverence. “It was the first time I felt compelled to draw you. I believed that if I could capture the cause of my distress then the response could be analyzed and therefore subdued, until I could ultimately discard it,” he says, as his arm reaches across to flip over the page, unveiling the second, adding, as Jim’s eyes grow wide, “I have since forfeited that theory to the fact of your ineluctable ability to affect.”

It’s another of himself, laughing unattractively as he sits under the same tree on J-Weghn, soft yellow petals cascading around him. His cheeks are warm with an almost unnatural blush, the bits of iris you can see through the slits of his eyes an exaggerated motley of color, the colored pencil haze of gold around him bleeding into the blue sky behind him in a weaker version of what it would become in Spock’s recent works.

“Your wide variety of reactions to the manner in which the wind interacted with the blossoms left a resilient impression,” the Vulcan’s tone tiptoeing into contentment.

“I giggled and kept saying that it looked like it was snowing.” Kirk smiles around the words. “I think you nearly short circuited. How many times do you think you used the word ‘illogical’ that day?”

Spock—though Jim assumes he must know the literal answer— replies instead, “I was not able to understand your response at the time, or my own.”

“What do you mean?” Jim asks, head twitching towards him, his eyes just barely winning the fight to stay on the drawing despite his face angling slightly towards the Vulcan. “Believe me, I’d remember if you so much as smiled.”

And he would, the early ones especially having been pressed into the pages of his mind like a sentimental scrapbook. But Spock is already waving him off with only a twitch of his jaw.

“Fauna being shaken from its branches, carried by the passage of an air current, will always be a simple exchange of physics. I do not believe myself capable of finding the joy in it that you do,” the Vulcan’s voice is soft enough that Jim knows there is more to wait for, staying silent even when he feels the weight of the eyes staring at the side of his face. “However, I have learned to find that same joy in my gladness for yours on the occasions I witness it.”

“Is that your long winded way of simply saying that seeing me happy makes you happy, Spock?” Kirk manages to ask, around a throat clenching at the affection he finds in Spock’s brown eyes, a quiet sense of peace offered in the set of the lips below them.

The right corner of said mouth twitching further upwards as Spock states, “Happiness is an emotion.”

“You’re not running for office, Spock,” his own voice peppered with playful admonishment. “That isn’t an answer.”

“No, it is not,” he retorts, finding his routinely Vulcan tone. The neutrality of inflection so desperately in contradiction to the tender way Spock’s fingers find the inside of Jim’s wrist, stroking the delicate skin below the cuff of his sleeve before sliding down the curve of his palm, intertwining their fingers with a sureness that wrenches a gasp out of Kirk with its own unique force.

An energy comes from the press of their skin, one that seems to easily target the most vulnerable spot inside of him, the piece that has long wanted to intone his simple truth into the unknown. It curls around him, an ensuring pressure, smothering the last of his objections with a sensation of belonging that seems to grow from themselves, until the words seem to fall out of Jim, with sudden ease. “I fell in love that day.”

His consciousness eventually catches up, righting himself with a handful of slow blinks, reshaping his face in an expression of only half-mocked confidence as he muses, “Started to, at least, like a tumble. It’s been an impressive dive, plunging into love with you. You’d think I’d have found the bottom by now.”

Jim squeezes the warm hand still holding his, so firmly that it must be uncomfortable, though the peace on the Vulcan’s face appears unwavering. Spock’s own fingers tighten reassuringly around Kirk’s, his thumb tracing the line of Jim’s finger as he turns to face his captain. His unoccupied hand raises, finding a perch on the curve of Kirk’s jaw, fingertips sliding past his ear as they bury themselves in golden hair, gently directing Jim’s face upwards until there is only their own self control between them.

Behind Spock’s head, the recessed light burns brighter than the others, the door past his shoulders a more saturated red than the last time he looked, the artworks in Jim’s peripherals dulling in comparison to irises like roasted coffee, the allure of hair, profoundly dark like polished hematite, and cheeks that burn greener the longer Jim stares. From the radiant pink of his lips to the painted blue of his eyelids, the hues of the universe’s pallette have been pushed to their natural limit where the brush has graced Spock’s being.

Spock whose voice nearly breaks around a poorly hidden chuckle as he finally responds, “As I recall, on that particular day, it was I who fell.”

The responding laugh is out of Jim before he fully realizes the joke, the better part of his brain lagging with the added weight of hope fulfilled, his chest still rumbling from his lungs below, rattling with unhinged joyful giggles when Spock begins to lean in. Like a preset equation, Kirk tilts his head the correct degree, his eyes falling closed on the intake of breath that follows the press of lips against his own.

At some point one of them must let go of the other’s hand, Kirk finding both of his suddenly buried in silken black hair as his arms reach up over the Vulcan’s slim shoulders. One palm continues cupping Jim’s flushing face, thumb sweeping high enough to brush against the spot where Kirk’s eyelashes meet his cheek, while the other wraps around the expanse of his ribcage, steadying him.

And it’s pathetic, really, should he think too hard on the noise that leaves him at the soft touch of a closed mouth kiss, tongues barely meeting as only a product of Jim’s irrepressible desire to taste Spock, if only in shy greeting. He tears his mouth away when Spock’s responds in kind, unwilling to wager he’ll be of sound mind to remember their setting should he allow this to progress any further.

His fingers continue to mess up Spock’s normally immaculately styled hair, foreheads coming together as he crowds his face against the Vulcan’s, breathing into his skin with a labored measure their actions haven’t warranted.

“How does this moment rank?” Jim whispers, at last, against Spock’s lips as he loses the war, pressing their mouths back together for a moment. “Is it worthy of being painted?”

Spock continues to make things difficult, hand sliding down until his pinky finger finds its way under the hem of Jim’s tunic, the slight contact of skin making him shudder with innocence no one would believe he possessed.

“I do not make it a habit to judge an experience solely on its onset and therefore my answer will only be relevant once the moment is fully consummated,” Spock murmurs. The pitch of his voice dropping low as he hides his smile by tipping his face, kissing Kirk where ear meets jaw, continuing softly, “It may provide a fascinating subject for a joint endeavor, should you wish to participate in a collaborative venture.”

Jim’s cheeks have begun ache with his smile, his muscles contorting around the unusual width of it. His heart racing, loud and solid in his chest, arms wrapping tighter around the Vulcan’s neck as if the moment runs on this glorious contact, unwilling to risk it despite the more rational voice in his head.

“You’ve borne witness to my best attempt at art, Spock. You point me in the direction of anything you’ve shaken a brush at and I’ll only ruin it.”

It’s a joke, an obvious one, though there’s a firmness to Spock’s face as he pulls away, only enough to see him. Jim’s eyes flicker from one umber iris to the other, fighting the proximity in a vain attempt to focus, the Vulcan seeming to manage if the intensity of his stare is proof. The second hand finally frames Jim’s face, trapping him solidly in this heaven of a prison.

Kirk’s tongue peeks out to wet his lips as his gaze falls on its own accord to Spock’s mouth, a mouth that parts around the words, “I have yet to see a corner of a world less appealing because of you.”

“There’s a lot of corners out there, we’re statistically bound to bump into one I can ruin. I know they say that art is subjective, but there are limits to what people can accept.”

Eyebrows drawn together, Spock’s expression morphs into one of thoughtful consideration, the lines of his face a blank slate for his response, “I now find this statement of subjectivity to be flawed.”

Jim’s “Oh?” is barely verbalized before Spock’s lips reclaim his, breathing his answer into Kirk’s mouth.

“Whoever deemed art to be subjective, they have never seen you.”

* * *

By morning, a nearly massacred double portrait will be hung in Spock’s quarters after Kirk loses his own suggested coin toss. The Vulcan’s promising sketch of two men having fallen thrice victim; Jim’s insistence of an overbright pallette had been a misstep, not aided by Spock’s illogical choice to forgo brushes in favor of the paint meeting canvas by means of their joining fingers, and their mutual disrespect for moderation had proved to be an unhelpful contributor.

Though if anyone should ask about its appearance, the table in the art studio that seems to have been broken under the weight of two adult males, or the streak of blue behind Spock’s ear that Jim, unfortunately, only notices as they exit the turbo lift at the start of alpha, then he will simply tell them the truth.

Art is meant to leave an impression.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks time!
> 
> For you, the reader, for indulging my nonsense. Thank you for encouraging me, if you do, but either way, I will not be stopped.
> 
> To [Pageling](https://cat-and-the-fiddle.tumblr.com/) for putting up with me complaining to you, nonstop, about your own present, not that I give you much choice. You're an amazingly talented artist and I'm sure that reading my attempt to pretend I know a damn single thing about painting was hilarious to you. Everyone go harrass her about finishing her own fic!
> 
> To Caitlyn! Who refuses to get a tumblr so that people will believe me that you actually exist! Let's just both agree to be thankful we didn't have to go through another row about the word 'smelled.'
> 
> To [Kiwi](https://flightlesskiwi.tumblr.com/) for being the sweetest, most sincere, cheerleader ever.
> 
> To [Chauncey](https://summerofspock.tumblr.com/) for your valient attempt to win the war against my love of everything comma shaped. Your betaing is, without a doubt, the only thing holding this sinking ship together.
> 
> And, an apology, to the random person who sat next to me on the airplane home from California as I edited this. I saw you looking. You saw me seeing you looking. Neither of us mentioned it and, I think I speak for both of us when I say, we'll both always regret it.
> 
> Until next time folks you can hurl rocks at me [on my tumblr.](https://grumpybonesey.tumblr.com/) LLAP


End file.
